


String behind my heart

by KatherineKrawl



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Awkwardness, Bottom Will Graham, Coming In Pants, Confused Will, Dry Humping, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Fire place sex, Hannibal Cooks, Hannibal and Will are in hiding, Hannibal dresses in suits, Hannibal is Hannibal, Hannibal is a Cannibal, Hannibal is intense, Hannibal is mysterious, Hannibal is patient, Iceland, Kissing, Longing, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Making Out, Male Homosexuality, Motorcycles, Not really a date, Operas, Oral Sex, Outdoor Sex, POV First Person, POV Will Graham, Pining, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Possessive Hannibal, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Rating: NC17, Rimming, Rutting, Self-Pity, Sex, Slow Burn, Smut, Survivor Guilt, The male kind, Top Hannibal, Will in t-shirts and jeans, Will is a Mess, Will is even more intense, Will is nervous, but a date, cannibalism mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-09 12:36:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 34,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11104704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatherineKrawl/pseuds/KatherineKrawl
Summary: The sound of the door latching shut echoed in the hallway. My shoulders tensed, my heart sped up and my fingers clutched around the porcelain sink. Footsteps in heavy boots thumped on the wooden parquet and I took another deep breath before walking out of the bathroom and into the hall. I kept my steps light, my breaths deep, and looked over the banister at the ground floor. It was him. Of course it was him.After the fall, Will struggles with the destructive past of his relationship with Hannibal, and the destruction he left behind him. While Hannibal is willing to provide answers, Will is afraid to come to terms with what he really wants.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everybody!
> 
> I'm a new Fannibal and I wanted to share my very first Hannigram fanfic! I was always too scared, but I am so awestruck by how generous, kind and warm this fandom is that I felt courageous enough to post this!  Thank you so much for reading and I hope you like it! Updates are weekly at the latest!

His lips had not searched for mine, they had been certain I was there. They had pressed against me, light, soft, but never wavering. Never unsure. 

I remembered the feeling, now and many more times these past weeks, as I leaned on the sink and watched myself staring back at me in the mirror. I inhaled, deep and tired, tapped my short nails against the porcelain and released the breath between my lips. It was two weeks since it had happened, but my stomach coiled tight every time the memory refused to be suppressed. A pink flush crept up from underneath my collar and I ran an unsteady hand through my untamed curls.' _Stop_ ,' I scolded myself, and straightened my shoulders to face myself again. 

The scar on my cheek was looking better, I noticed. I pressed my fingertips against the raised scar-tissue and watched it pale under the pressure, before it turned back to its inflamed self. He had done an excellent job stitching me up and nursing the wound. The scars would never fade completely, but three and a half months of care had softened and smoothened out the angry red marks. 

I looked away from the mirror to wash my hands in the antique sink and dried them on a thick, luxurious towel. It was still hard to look at myself, and it wasn't because of the many scars that littered me. It was difficult, or maybe not difficult enough, to see myself, looking well fed and rested. A tinge of permanent pink on my cheeks. The dull dusty film gone from my eyes. I looked alive. Wrecked, but real. Present. And it was all done over the backs of others. Colleagues, people that had considered me a friend... loved ones. My family.

My head turned at the sound of the front door clicking open and dragging across the mat downstairs. The metallic clunk of the door latching shut again echoed in the hallway. My shoulders tensed, my heart sped up and my fingers clutched around the porcelain sink. Footsteps in heavy boots thumped on the wooden parquet and I took another deep breath before walking out of the bathroom and into the hall. I kept my steps light, my breaths deep, and looked over the banister at the ground floor. It was him. 

Of course it was him.

The early afternoon sun was hidden by heavy rainclouds and against that dark backdrop his black leather jacket contrasted with his silver hair shining in the scarce lighting of the hallway. A tremor worked its way up my spine and jaw and I felt the heat spreading up my ears and down my neck. It was a rare sight to see him disheveled, but the helmet he was carrying under his arm explained the predicament. I could only see his dark silhouette, but the leather, the boots and the helmet could only mean that he had been out on his motorcycle. 

He shook out his hair and ran his fingers through the unkempt strands that I had rarely touched, but which feeling I had memorized. My fingers had tightened in it when I pushed us over the cliff, into the angry water beneath. I had grabbed onto it when he pushed us both to shore as we convulsed water and blood, convinced we would both die there. It had been soft against my cheek when he caught me after my knees had given out, faint from blood loss.

He placed his helmet on the side table by the door and walked two steps towards the kitchen. Then he paused and I held my breath when he turned his gaze up. Stinging maroon in the semi-darkness, it never failed to pick apart something within me. It had been that way since the very first day in Jack's office. 

“Good afternoon, Will,” he spoke after a beat, polite as ever, and nodded his head in my direction. His expression was blank, a friendly smile tugging at his lips, but in those eyes there was something strained. Smoldering and tight. Something that had been there since the cliff. Something that pulled at a string behind my heart.

I nodded back, swallowing hard. The way his tongue curled around my name and how it prickled the skin on the back of my neck was something that taunted me in my sleep. The sound was something that had stayed with me during all those years away from him. He watched me a few seconds longer, but I knew he wasn't going to say anything more. I would only disappoint him if he did. He walked away after that, into the kitchen and out of sight, and it relieved me as much as it ached. I turned to walk back to my solitary room and sat at the disorganized desk that was filled with half read books and scattered paper. I'd tried to read, I'd tried to write, but my head was full of tangled, scratching clutter. How were we ever going to move on, from this?

My hands fisted at my long hair, as they did often these days, and I rested the heels of my palms against my eyes. Three and a half months. But it seemed like it had happened only hours ago . 

After my poor attempt to kill us both, he had dragged us unto the beach, pushed the water out of our lungs and looked at me like I was the sun. He forgave me, as if there was nothing to forgive and never asked me for an explanation. He just asked me if I would go with him, would we survive. He never said what it entailed, but it didn't matter. I said yes.

I knew who he was, better than anyone. Hannibal was a sadistic, highly intelligent and extremely dangerous serial killer. A cannibal. He had murdered and devoured, dozens, hundreds, thousands of people. Innocents and sinners alike. He slit Abigail's throat, he tried to kill me on numerous occasions and he sent the Dragon after Molly. After Wally. My family. And I said yes.

Bedelia had told me he was in love with me. But when I looked at him, covered in blood, sea water and shreds of clothes, I didn't ask what that meant. I said yes.

We fled in stolen cars and drove all the way to Seattle where Hannibal appeared to have connections that he never explained. Agency. We hid away in a little apartment in an awful, dank neighborhood, and I never asked him any questions. There was a doctor he knew, who came to assist with the medical care we both needed until we were strong enough to take care of ourselves, and each other. Careful as Hannibal felt we needed to be, he killed the doctor by driving a screwdriver into his eye socket. I didn't ask him why he felt that was the best way to do it, but I did partake of him when Hannibal served him for dinner. Unflinching. After a month, we went back for Bedelia. I never hesitated. 

The first weeks after the fall we were both too beaten and bruised to talk to each other, but the silence stuck after. Hannibal tried to reach out sometimes, but the words got stuck in my throat when I looked at him. Small talk wasn't for either one of us, but I wasn't ready for anything beyond that. Where would we go? What do we leave behind? What will we be? 

What have I done?

We came to Iceland after that. Fake passports, barely any luggage. A small village near a big city, with no people that cared about the news. Or newcomers for that matter. Hannibal brought us to an old but well kept mansion near the woods. It seemed to belong to him, but I never asked. I didn't ask anything anymore. Hannibal looked like he felt right at home. He showed me the house and the village, and everything was quiet. The village, the house and us. But it was what happened after, later that same week, that had changed everything. 

He was changing the bandages of wounds that still needed dressing, like he still did every evening. We were in the living room, where the lit fireplace blazed comfortably and the walls were made of wood and velvet. He grazed my ribs with rough fingertips and careful, professional touches. It left me unsure where to look, every time. My shirt was on the back of a chair and my bare feet curled into the thick rug when his fingers ran gently down my scarred cheek. “You're looking well. It will be only a matter of days before you will be able to go without these,” he said and re-bandaged a cut below my right nipple. 

The skin tightened when his fingers grazed me. The nub hardened, without my consent, and my knees wobbled in response. They did that every time he re-bandaged me. Every time he touched me, lately. A bead of sweat formed on my brow and I closed my eyes and swallowed hard around the flutter in my throat. It was something I couldn't try to understand and I really didn't want to.

“All done,” Hannibal smiled, careful but genuinely, standing before me in his soft, oatmeal sweater. His shoeless feet were clad in black beneath his charcoal slacks. Those feet nearly touched mine on the rug. It was deceiving, how soft and homey he looked with his sweater and the longer hair that fell playfully into his eyes. How warm his fingers felt on my skin. Like he wasn't the devil I knew him to be. 

He pulled his hand away from my chest, but his eyes stayed on mine. It was impossible to struggle out of that captive stare. It burned me. Scorched. I felt it, every time I dared to look closer. “Yes. Thank you,” I replied a little unsteady, hearing my own heart pumping in my ears. Whenever he looked at me like that, I saw him, open. Darkness like a blazing, black flame and yet completely vulnerable beneath the ashes. It was frightening to have it directed at me and to see him, ever triumphant, allowing me to look right into the raw core underneath. He had looked at me like that before, but I had only known and understood it for these past several weeks. And I had yet to accept it. I glanced down, looking at our feet on the rug when his eyes started to burn a hole into mine. It was then that I felt a finger underneath my chin. Before I could even look up, I felt his lips on mine.

It was demanding, without any of the hesitation one might expect from a first kiss without consent. His lips pressed into mine softly, wet, yet unforgiving and whole. They were relaxed and never tensed, but the elegant force behind every muscle in his body was overwhelming. I hadn't gotten the time to even realize what was happening before my body responded on its own. 

His hand framed my face as he pressed me against him. His index finger nudged my head up and my lips against his. He hummed deep in his throat as he pulled my bottom lip between his teeth and sucked it gently into his mouth to demonstrate his need. And it had me captured, overpowered, surrendering. It wasn't by choice, but it happened. I was sucked into a fathomless pit of dark, deep yearning.

I tasted the wine on his lips, felt the hot stream of air on my cheeks and I inhaled the earthy sent of his skin. My whole body, shorter against his broad shoulders, sagged in his embrace and he removed his finger from my chin. He knew I was pulled too far into him to refuse. He used his free arm to wrap around my neck and laced the curls of my hair with his fingers. I responded, involuntarily, by tightening my fingers in his sweater, which he in turn rewarded by massaging his fingers into the skin of my skull. He kept me steady, and I could do nothing but to arch into the sensation, starving for touch.

My eyes closed and my nose panted out my rapid breaths. There was nothing to be done but wade into the stream as all else seemed to go quiet inside my mind. Never before had I been able to silence the screeching seagulls inside of my skull. Never before had I been hopeless to surrender to nothing but touch and I momentarily forgot to fight that feeling inside me.

I felt my skin sizzling from the burning radiation of his fingertips. Branding me, to be remembered long after. One arm curled around me, as his hand came to press against the small of my back with a large palm. He pressed me closer, his thumb running up and down the curve of my spine, and released my reddened bottom lip from between his sharp teeth without pulling away. His lips then kissed the abused flesh, as if to soothe it. Everything about him seemed slow and soft, but I felt it. I knew. I tasted the hot coals, I felt the strong, coiling serpents, the smothering darkness within. I couldn't tell what pulled at me more. It was when he slowly pushed his lips apart, forcing mine to follow, and his warm, soft tongue had traced my bottom lip, that a moan escaped from the back of my throat. My lips complied, and his tongue slid gently, but territorially over mine in a sweet, slow claim. Barely, just barely, before he pulled from me. 

He released me and stepped back and I forced myself not to follow. He looked at me, swollen lips, heated skin and those liquid eyes of bloody amber. His breathing was controlled, unlike mine. His posture and clothes ever impeccable. In those eyes I could see that he knew, more than ever, that he woke something sleeping inside of me, and that it terrified me.“I'll wait, Will. Forever, if you want me to,” he said, flames licking at his pupils. He cupped my face softly, keeping my head tilted upwards as he stroked my cheek with his thumb before he turned and walked from me. And in that moment, I could have screamed.

Sitting at my desk now, two weeks later, the memory was a constant push and pull inside my skull. And I wanted to scream, still.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I didn't remember how I found myself sitting beside him on the library couch, but chances were I hadn't been thinking. I'd just followed that tug on the string in my chest, and this was where it led me. When I sat down on the opposite side of the red, velvet sofa, he lifted his head from his book and glanced my way. Careful. Calculated. I didn't say anything, but I didn't look away and let our eyes connect for the first time in two weeks. It was as clear as a cloudless night that he could see the tremor in me – my discomposure – and feel the words I wasn't saying when I swallowed against my tightened throat. It was clear, because the flutter of muscles around his eye betrayed his affection, his scrutiny of me. He closed the book, forgetting to mark the page, and placed it on the side table.

_Done by the amazing Krey9J! ♡♡♡_

Those first two weeks in Iceland life had settled around us quite comfortably. We were still the subject of an active search, so we both agreed not to go out any more than necessary, and Hannibal retreated to sketching, reading and cooking. Every so often he went out on his motorbike, or took the car for groceries. But never in a town near us, as we wanted to steer suspicion away from our area. 

I read whatever I could find in the library, if I could concentrate. It was rarely so. I also tended to the garden around the house when the weather allowed it. Which was an equally rare occasion. More often, I simply let my mind wonder around all the missing shards of the tiles that paved the palace of my mind. All missing answers.

Conversation had been nothing but polite since the cliff. And after the kiss, it was practically non-existent. Hannibal tried to coax me, but the noise in my head overruled the words in my throat. It wasn't he who had changed, but in my relationship with him, it was me who was ever changing. But he didn't push or poke at my silence, and I knew he was waiting. Forever, apparently. 

That kiss, it had been his cards on the table. He was open and exposed now, waiting for me to show him my hand. There was no mistake of what he wanted; our bond elevated. It was only to which level that remained unclear. If it was love, like Bedelia had said, it promised me nothing. His love could no doubt be reconstructed into something unrecognizable. Everything about him was astonishing, otherworldly, but nothing came without a price. And it was always paid in blood.

He'd said he would wait for me, but I wondered what exactly he was waiting for. My acceptance of everything he was? My own becoming? Or maybe just a fuck and a killing spree? I had left everything behind, for him. My wife, my job and my home. My dogs and my adopted son. My life and last drop of remaining sanity. And now he was waiting for me to reveal how deep I wanted him inside my life, my head, my body. 

I was rendered speechless. Maybe I didn't know what I was willing to give. Or maybe I did, subconsciously, and the answer frightened me. Because unlike ever before, he waited for me to tell him what it was I wanted, wishing for me to come to him willingly, and choose him for one final time. One that would last, until our end.

There was also the other thing. Something that kneaded my stomach into a tight ball. Before him, there had never been a man, nor had I desired one. Nevertheless, I knew such a bond had never been out of our reach. I knew how deep our connection clawed at us both, but I hadn't realized it was this, before she pointed it out. All I did know was that in those years of separation, my mind never stopped screaming for him. 

Our building stones, they were of the same wall. One brick would fall without the other. Co-dependency and narcissism translated into a dance of push and pull. I had come to understand better how deeply we were twisted together, but for it to be physical, as his kiss had showed me he desired, was a territory untreated. For now, the idea was still only explored in the safe walls of my skull and had developed only weeks ago in Bedelia's office.

And I couldn't possibly say what such possibilities unraveled inside me, other than it curled my toes in my shoes when I thought of him now. Because even though it terrified me, that kiss was all there was room for in my head.

That night, he served a dinner that was sublime. It was nothing short of passion, sophistication, purpose and art blended together on a plate. Of this I had no doubt. But like most of my meals these days, my mouth was too numb to taste it. Distant from the food, like my tongue had been badly burned. He was sitting across from me in a sky blue dress-shirt and a burgundy vest and tie. His hair was combed back and his fingers curled around the stem of his wine glass. Sweat brewed under my arms and I wondered if he could smell it when his nostrils flared. We didn't talk. We didn't share looks. He was waiting for me.

**

I didn't remember how I found myself sitting beside him on the library couch, but chances were I hadn't been thinking. I'd just followed that tug on the string in my chest, and this was where it led me. When I sat down on the opposite side of the red, velvet sofa, he lifted his head from his book and glanced my way. Careful. Calculated. I didn't say anything, but I didn't look away and let our eyes connect for the first time in two weeks. It was as clear as a cloudless night that he could see the tremor in me – my discomposure – and feel the words I wasn't saying when I swallowed against my tightened throat. It was clear, because the flutter of muscles around his eye betrayed his affection, his scrutiny of me. He closed the book, forgetting to mark the page, and placed it on the side table.

Lost and aimless like a feather in a storm, I didn't make a move to touch him. I couldn't. I didn't know how. But it didn't matter, because he did. His amber eyes searched mine in affirmation and even if I didn't speak, or nodded, or blinked, he found what he was looking for in my eyes. He moved closer, shifted against the velvet underneath, and carefully threaded his fingers into my hair. Warm and slow. It was like he was caressing a wounded animal, careful to win its trust, and the role suited me, here and now. I released a long-held breath and closed my eyes as I felt him move in. 

“Shh,” he soothed me with his lips close to my ear as he leaned in and pressed his cheek against mine. His warmth, his scent, his nearness, it was familiar like a dream that I could remember only in the tone, but never the visual. His fingers worked gently over my temples and into my hair as I rested my head against his. His scent was earth and rain and fire, his blood was hot in the veins beneath his skin. It felt intimate. More than anything else had. Maybe it was because an embrace with Hannibal usually ended in blood. I sighed when he worked delicate fingers down the soft base of my neck and his evening stubble chafed the underside of my chin.

His fingers grazed my jaw before his hand cupped and caressed the skin of my throat. Fingertips trailed against my windpipe, my Adam's apple and the pulsing vein under pale, fragile skin. My skin tightened in goosebumps and I tilted my head back to give him access to the tender flesh. One snap of the bones, one slice of my skin, strong hands around my trachea, and surviving this would all have been meaningless. But I arched into his hands and all else simply seemed to fade. 

Last night, I played with the thought of telling him not to wait. To not expect anything from me. I wasn't ready for anything more and perhaps I never would be. But now, I was shamelessly kneadable in his surgeon hands.

He pulled back to look at me, and his eyes glistered in the light. Alive and undivided in his attention. His fingers danced over my aching muscles, down my shoulders and my chest, and there was no pain behind the pleasure, as I had grown so accustomed to. One slender calf, hidden in slacks, slid innocently down my leg, until his ankle hooked behind mine. It was close. So close. Every breath was felt and heard. Every touch was to an open nerve. I saw his eyes fluttering to my parted lips, and before I could consider, he kissed me. I remembered his lips, soft and warm and smooth over sharp teeth. The taste of wine, dark roasted coffee and burning coal. His fingers tangled back into my hair and his leg rubbed higher against my thigh as I clung to him, nails in the vest. His lips coaxed mine into a slow dance, hot and deep, marking me from the inside out. Could I have reached myself, I would have told me to pull away while I still could. Wait. Think first. But I was too late. I couldn't. I didn’t. I let him cup my face in the palm of his hands, as his thumbs stroked my cheeks like a precious, fragile thing. An offer to the gods. It seemed fitting enough. 

I let myself be led when he gently pressed me backwards into the velvet pillows of the sofa. He was careful, allowing room for interruption. For objection, which I never voiced, as if the words no longer existed inside me. Because his kisses and touches left room for nothing that resembled control. His careful mouth grew passionate, as did the roaming of his hands, and he never stopped as he slid off the couch and onto me until we pressed together, heavy, solid and hot. Tangled with arms and legs and mouths, unrestrained, as if he'd been starving.

He grunted when I tested my teeth on his lip and the noise rumbled from within his chest to mine. I could feel the vibration as if the sound was coming from inside myself. I grabbed his waistcoat, clawing at the silk on his back, and pressed my lips back against his. Soft and wet and close enough to feel his nose against my cheek. He was giving me everything, but didn't seem in any hurry to move things along. He enjoyed me, however offered. The thought pressed on my temples and behind my eyes, knowing it would have been easier if it was indeed just a fuck he wanted. If his hands didn't cradle my face and his mouth didn't seek out my trembling breaths, cherishing every single one. To be revered by the devil, it was entirely overpowering.

He brought up his leg to slide between mine, drawing decidedly towards me. I could feel his erection, very present beneath his slacks, pressing against my thigh and my breath hitched, hitched again, and stuttered out. God. He didn't move his hips and I felt his fingers pawing gently at my cheeks and neck alongside our sliding lips to soothe my panic. We stilled, open mouth to open mouth, and he hummed in satisfaction when my breathing evened under his weight. I knew he must have felt me too, hard against the inside of my jeans. I wished I could blame my predicament on nothing but his hands on my body, but in all honesty, I had been hard since I sat down and saw the longing in his eyes.

I had never before touched another man like that. I had never wanted to. But touching Hannibal was like a delicious, delirious narcissism. Like touching the missing part of myself, that I had gone so long without. I was relieved he couldn’t see my face burning crimson when his upper thigh grazed my cock through the denim. I wasn't sure how I felt about him knowing how my body responded to him. Not when I hadn't decided for myself how I felt about this.

His mouth distracted me from any other thought as his lips induced me to open up for him. He kissed so light and then so deep, tilting my head with his hands as his warm, soft tongue slid past my lips and followed after mine. A soft hum rose from his throat when I fisted my hands into the back of his vest and, encouraged, he rolled his hips against mine. My tongue ran down the row of teeth, sharp and blunt, and I arched my back up into him when one hand pulled up my hips to press our groins together. 

Pressed beneath him was like lying in a hot bath, filled with water black as ink, thick as blood, invasive like smoke. He was everywhere, and I moaned on his tongue when he angled our hips just right. He surrounded me, blended us. His heartbeat filled my ears as if it were mine and I felt his grunts in the back of my throat. I got lost in him then. He pushed back against me, pressing closer onto my body, and the friction made the heat in my lower belly flare up high. My cock was throbbing and leaking in my boxers, and I felt him against me in a similar state. I closed my eyes, screwed them shut and felt a drop of sweat rolling from my hairline when I brought my legs around his hips and rolled with his movements. We were both fully dressed, bodies trapped inside layers upon layers, but I felt him as if there was no separation. No clothes, no skin, no bones between us.

He gasped, strangled, and I opened my eyes to see him above me. Gloriously disheveled. The unfocused, hazy eyes, the blazed open black pupils, the silver hair that spilled from his perfect coiffe, it was a primal sight I had seen only on him in the heat of slaughter. A flush worked up over his collar to his ears and his skin shone with heat and transpiration. His tie, pushed out from beneath his waistcoat, rested against my fluttering chest and his arms caged me in, placed on either side of my head. He was a brutal force. Open, raw, like tearing skin from flesh, without his human veil. 

Our eyes met, briefly, but my hands clawed at his shirt to pull into another kiss. I couldn't look into his eyes and see the pulsing spill of emotions, nor did I want to show him mine. I couldn't show him what I didn't know I was hiding. Instead, I licked into his mouth, pawed at his back and let our hips move in tandem. The outlined erection in his slacks pressed hotly into the crease of my inner thigh, while mine rubbed up against the confinement of my underwear and jeans, up against his strained zipper. 

It was barely contact, but I felt it everywhere. From my spasming toes, to the tips of my lashes, to the tightness just above my balls. I gasped against his lips as his hands ran from my hips to my sides and my shoulders. Pulling me with him in the unforgivable rhythm of our hips. It was wild, wanton, uncontrolled. A side he rarely showed the world. A sight no one survived. He pulled from my lips, and his teeth scraped at my ear, my neck, and bit down on the skin over my pulsing point. Careful, but not hesitant, and I followed the pain with an arch of my back. My legs fell open even wider and I had nothing left inside me to care about the picture I was painting. His abandoned grunts, hot and wet against my ear, tore down the last of my restrain.

His forehead, damp and hot, pressed into my temple. His hands smoothed up and down my sides and chest, covered in the thin fabric of my shirt. His lips, parted and soft, pressed underneath the shell of my ear and his nose inhaled me, over and over, buried in my hair. It was so, so close – no air left unshared between us and it became closer still, harder and then frantic as we fell out of a structured rhythm, grinding after our pleasure. I knew he was about to fall off the edge when he said my name, hoarse, deep, in a whisper against my skin. He groaned, jerked, pushed his face into my neck and without warning pressed his hand firmly over the throbbing cock inside my jeans. 

I followed, pulsating and releasing against my underwear and his hot, open hand. _“Oh.”_ A hailstorm of pleasure rained over me as our bodies tightened, trembled and arched in our embrace. It felt real. Infiltrating. It pushed into every corner of my mind and every crease of my body and there was room for nothing else as I trembled and bucked through my release. Everything in me felt like Hannibal.

I lay back, panting, and felt my face wet. A mixture of sweat and tears, probably most of it mine. He was still on top of me, heavy and breathing on my damp skin. His face still in my neck and his hand on my crotch. We stayed like that while our breathing slowed and our trembling subsided, locked in our embrace. I looked at the white, structured ceiling above, feeling one of his hands stroking lazily along my ribs. My fingers were still entangled in the silk of his vest and squeezed the fabric hard between my fingers as I tried to breathe, breathe, breathe against the panic welling inside.

_God. Oh god._

It was 7 minutes to 11, I was somewhere in Iceland and my name was Will Graham. I was a married man with an adopted son, who had a home, a job, a normal life. Polite. I had fought for my heart full of values and my head full of morals, and despite it, I chose this. Him. Not on a whim. Not on the cliff, but the day I accepted the Dragon's case. Maybe even the day he turned himself in and I didn't stop thinking about him like I had promised myself. 

And choosing him, consciously or not, was losing everything about myself I had fought so hard to keep. The good, normal man, that found life worth living in the safe side of town. I thought of my empty wedding ring in the drawer of my nightstand upstairs. I thought of the drying stain inside my sticky underwear. 

“Don't go in there,” I heard and felt him whispering against my ear. His hands fisted lightly in my curls. “Stay with me.” I wouldn't have recognized it for a plea, if I hadn't known him better. “I can't,” I mouthed against the skin of his neck, my throat thick and my lashes wet. He lifted himself off of me, and in silence, let me walk back to my room. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!  
> https://www.tumblr.com/blog/katherinekrawl


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What did you think?” 
> 
> I jerked in my seat at the sound of his voice cutting through the darkness. I was back in the armchair, no light present but the fireplace, and had sat there staring into the licking flames for what could have been hours. I looked up to see him and saw his eyes glowing positively red in the light, as if the Wendigo looked back from beneath his human skin.
> 
> “What?” I said, feeling icy thread replace the warm, dozy mindset I had created for myself. He came to sit in the armchair beside me and I felt a twitch of resentment at his calm exterior. His eyes were curious, his tone conversational. Nothing at all like the wrung out inside of me.
> 
> “When Bedelia said that I am in love with you, what did you think?” He asked me patiently and I quickly looked away. He was picking up the conversation I had childishly ran from, as if it had never been interrupted.

He wasn't home for most of the next day and I had folded myself into one of the armchairs in front of the electric fireplace. Rain slammed against the windows, and I stared at the pages of the book on my lap. There had been days like this before, but I never asked him where he went. Just like I never asked about the meat served at the table. 

He came home late in the afternoon, hair and boots dripping on the parquet, and changed clothes before he went into the kitchen to cook our dinner. We ate in silence again and even though I could feel his eyes on me, I could never catch him looking. The thickened air between us was unmistakable, now more than ever, and it made it harder and harder to breathe.  
“Hannibal?” I cut through the heavy silence when the pressure on my temples became so great I feared it would crush my skull. The warm swirl of his bourbon eyes met mine instantly, as if he had anticipated this moment with certainty. He placed his cutlery on his plate before him and dabbed at the corner of his mouth with one of the heavy, folded napkins. Waiting, ostentatiously. My face heated, my breath turned shallow. 

“There are some things we should talk about,” I said, eyes shifting between him and my empty plate. He cocked his head, and nodded once. “I agree.” What followed was silence.

And I looked at him, biting the inside of my cheek. I didn't know how to tell him that in all these years without him, he hadn't faded from my mind. Not once. Not a second. That he had lived in my dreams and the walls of my mind. That my inner voice still sounded exactly like him. That rationally, I would have had him rotting away in his prison cell for the rest of his life, but that I'd had to tell myself each day that followed and each day again _why_ I had to want that. Why I shouldn't go, shouldn't call, shouldn't write. I didn't know how to tell him that I was afraid to want what I wanted from him, and afraid to ask if he wanted it too.

“Bedelia said you are in love with me,” I said, shocking myself by blurting out what had been on my mind for months. I felt my heart-rate picking up, flustered and horrified. That was not what I wanted to say. I threw my napkin on my plate and pushed back my chair. And before he could say anything, I turned and left the table. I realized I wasn't ready for the answer.

**

“And what did you think?” 

I jerked in my seat at the sound of his voice cutting through the darkness. I was back in the armchair, no light present but the fireplace, and had sat there staring into the licking flames for what could have been hours. I looked up to see him and saw his eyes glowing positively red in the light, as if the Wendigo looked back from beneath his human skin.

“What?” I said, feeling icy thread replace the warm, dozy mindset I had created for myself. He came to sit in the armchair beside me and I felt a twitch of resentment at his calm exterior. His eyes were curious, his tone conversational. Nothing at all like the wrung out inside of me.

“When Bedelia said that I am in love with you, what did you think?” He asked me patiently and I quickly looked away. He was picking up the conversation I had childishly ran from, as if it had never been interrupted.

I nervously tugged at my sleeves and snorted, quite possible aggravating him with such a rude noise. “She asked me if I... ached for you,” I said with a wry smile, and I traced the leather armrest of the chair with my fingernails. “I left,” I added, when there was no reply from the other chair. I counted five breaths before I had the courage to look up at him. His skin glowed warmly in the light. His silver hair reflected the orange of the flames. Stoic as ever he was, but his curious eyes shone openly, pulling at me. 

“I didn't think about it,” I told him. It wasn't truly a lie. It was a lie I believed myself. “I still don't.” I didn't look away this time, hoping the light of the fire would hide the flush that crept up my jaw. I saw his lips twitching, barely, well controlled, and watched him lean forward on his seat. “I think it's all you do,” he said, his accent curling heavy on each vowel and I heard the words as if I felt them on my skin. A caress. Invasive, like everything else about him.

“I can't,” I shivered, helplessly letting my fear slip out for him to see without any control left to stop it. He smiled, ruefully. His elbows leaned on his knees, forward, closer. “Do you think we could survive another separation?” He asked, without coloring his words in bluster or doubt. No evasion. When I didn't speak, his hand reached, slowly, leaving time and space for me to removed my hand from the armrest, before he curled his fingers around mine.

Warm and rough and dry, I remembered so well how they had felt on the skin of my neck. The longing, the painfully denied yearning I carried with me always, flared. It was stronger than me. It ripped everything else I considered vital from my flesh. “Touch me,” I said, before I could rethink. I felt the hot coil of liquefying swirl already dancing along my nerves when he looked at me and betrayed himself when his pupils blew wide.

“You want me to touch you?” He asked me with intent, tightening his grip on my hand.  
“Touch me,” I said again, nodding my head slowly as I looked at him. The sudden, primal heat that flickered through his eyes pulled heavy on me, and my heart stuttered when he used our joined hands to lead me out of my chair and before him. His arm wound around me the moment our feet touched, and I followed his guiding arms by climbing on his chair with my knees beside his hips. 

“Yes. Always yes,” he whispered, flames reflecting in his eyes as he looked up at me. His hands ran up to hold my hips as I straddled him, and he pulled me as close as we could possible sit, pressed into the one armchair. Illuminated by the fire, but otherwise in total darkness, he watched me in the dark. Eyes like burning coals of fire and teeth glistening sharply behind his lips. The way he looked right now; I knew him, just like this. His form had never been truer.  
He enjoyed kissing, I had realized this before. He did it with his whole body, hands wandering and lips searching and pulling and never holding back, without being overpowering. His soft lips sought out mine, reaching up in our warm embrace, and I pressed back into him this time without hesitation. My mind disposed of everything that wasn't him as our mouths opened hungrily to taste each other and our tongues met in search for lazy, passionate dominance. 

A deep hum from the back of his throat filled my ears and his large hands slid up my neck and entangled in my brown curls. My fingers dug into his broad shoulders in response to his caresses, and everything slipped away from me when his lips searched their way down my chin onto the sensitive skin of my exposed neck.

The moan I let out when those lips sucked wet and hot onto my pulsing point was nothing I recognized as me. Desperate, frantic, scandalous. His strong arms tightened around me at the noise, as if he was afraid I would come to my senses and slip away. But I didn't slip away. Despite my ironic name, I did not nearly possess such willpower. My mouth kept searching for his willingly, and my fingers tightened in his hair to pull him back to my lips. 

I was hovering over him, watching his glowing coals for eyes, as his swollen lips from our kisses kept chasing after mine. His hands danced slowly, roaming from the top of my curls to the curve of my hips. He was patient, all attention and precision, like when he was prepared and cooking a meal to perfection. Unwilling to give in to his urges to rush through it, like he never rushes through anything in life. But I didn't have that kind of patience anymore. I pressed my hips down on his lap, feeling his pressing erection against the underside of mine, and his mouth stifled the whimpers that fell from us both.

He must have been waiting for me to set the pace, because his hand instantly grabbed both of my hips and pressed me closer against him. The kisses returned, but this time his hand slid down over my ass, and his hips met mine when I started to rock against him. The way he moaned into me and dug his nails into the back pocket of my jeans started to make me lose control, and my hips stuttered and pressed without a rhythm as I rode him fully clothed.

His hand returned to my hips, squeezing, stilling me as I pulled from his lips and placed my cheek against his. The crackling spurts of the fire and our panting was the only sound in the dark room, and his fingers kept drawing circles on curve of my hips. “Don't stop,” I whispered, small and exposed, in his ear. His deep chuckle felt hot against my cheek, and his hands came up to frame my face as we pushed back and looked at each other in the dancing fire. With his glowing skin, eyes and hair, he looked like he was burning from the inside out.

“If we keep doing this with our clothes on, the dry cleaner will start asking questions,” he said with one of those barely-there smiles that I had come to recognize for genuine delight. I couldn't hide the nervous smile in answer to his words and nodded to answer the unspoken question between us. His eyes never left mine as I pulled back from the chair to stand before him, and lifted my fingers to the top button of my shirt. It told him all he needed to know when my shaking fingers released the first button, and he was on his feet before I could attempt the second. He lifted his hands to help, and kissed me when he his steady fingers ran down the row that remained. Not before long my chest was exposed and he folded the material off my shoulders to place it on the armchair that had previously been mine.

He didn't speak, but the curve of his lips and the liquid pleasure in his eyes hid nothing about his appreciation. Flat hands smoothed over the planes of my chest and the curve of my belly before his fingers found the button of my jeans and zipped down. The fabric pooled around my ankles and over my feet along with my socks and boxers. There was nothing left on me, from the scar on my belly, to the flush on my chest, to my fully hard cock curving up towards my stomach.

He looked at me, still completely dressed, and breathed, once, twice. Then, he allowed his eyes to meet mine and it felt like warm honey was spilled over my body and seeped into my skin. He wanted me. He didn't have to tell me.

He never took his eyes off me before he dipped down to the exposed flesh of my neck to kiss and suck gently on the naked skin while my hands searched and found the buttons of his waistcoat, his shirt and his slacks. Clothes fell, were placed on the chair, and I ran my hand through the revealed patch of graying chest hair. He was lean and muscular underneath his ever present suits. Strong. Prison had no doubt faded some of his previous physical strength, but the way his arms flexed and his back rippled under my hands screamed power. Control. I wondered, running my hands down his bellybutton and following the thin trail of hair into his slacks, what it would take to make him give that up completely. 

His slacks and underwear followed and along with his socks were placed on the chair and now it was my turn to spill honey over him. He was endlessly strong, with defined muscles under aging softness. Beautiful, I would say, but doubted he desired that. He was bigger than me. In muscle, in height, but I was looking at his cock when I was thinking it. I wasn't small by any means. But he was bigger, thicker and uncut. Groomed and trimmed, like everything else about him. It was an odd sensation to see him, all stoic control, aroused because of me. My breath hitched as I looked at him, much more exposed than he usually allowed. His longer hair messily pushed back and the confident presentation of his naked body made my breath hitch, just once, but he closed the space between us in the instant that followed. His hands ran across my naked skin, his mouth latched onto my collarbone, my throat, the little pink nub of my right nipple, and completely overwhelmed I held on to his shoulders.

He leaned in, closer, further, until I realized he was pressing me back onto the thick rug in front of the fireplace. My back came to rest against the soft brush of the expensive pale blue rug and Hannibal climbed on top of me. I pulled him up to me to kiss him, and he obeyed me by pulling me into a wet, open-mouthed kiss that left me writhing against him with my legs around his hips. 

"Touch me, please," I heard myself cry out again, and his mouth trailed back to suck my nipples between his sharp teeth and into his mouth. The hot coil in my lower belly roared and I clawed at his back at the little sparks of pleasure that launched through me. “Hannibal,” I gasped his name into the increasing darkness, and he was encouraged to kiss down further, dipping his head to work down my stomach and I cried out when his wet tongue slid down into my bellybutton. He traced my scar, his scar, with soft lips and small kisses.

And lower still. My head was spinning now and when his teeth scraped the inside of my thigh, my legs started to shake. I was completely overtaken and overwhelmed, and he knew it. He knew I was giving in to him. His broad hands slid down my stomach and onto my hips, pressing into the bone of my pelvis with his palms. He looked up to me, watching, asking, teasing. “Don't you crave change, Will?” He had asked me once. He had already known the answer, even when I hadn't.

His wet lips and eyes glistened in the firelight. Ash hair clung to his forehead and fell into his eyes. As if I could resist. It was far too late to refuse him. He had clawed too deep under my skin.  
"Please, Hannibal," I begged him in a husk whisper, and he smiled in the darkness as he played his devastating game with me. All the control that I had once mistaken for mine, was gone. 

He slid back on his knees between my legs, his eyes shifting back from my face to my leaking cock against my belly. “Will,” he sighed, and brought one finger to the moist, swollen head of my erection. Sweat rolled from my temples. I gasped at the teasing touch when his finger rubbed against the slit, and I couldn’t help but arch my back to follow his hand as my fingers dug into the rug beneath me. It took me everything I had not to curse.

His hand wrapped around me now, gently, much gentler than I would do it myself. Teasing still, and it left my knees quivering. That big, calloused hand against my skin, unlike any touch I had felt before, was pure, blissful agony. He surprised me by leaning forward and placing his soft lips against the moist head of my cock. I hissed at the sight as much as the feeling. He did nothing more than place sweet, open mouthed kisses to my bare skin, but I could feel it tingling in my toes.  
   
I could see I was dripping on myself quite obscenely now and watched him touch the pearly liquid with his lips. Spreading it around the tip and down my shaft and licking the drops into his mouth. I panted, fisted my fingers in his hair, and wondered if he wished me to be completely delirious by the end if it. “Please,” I begged, desperately, wanton and clawing at the rug beneath. He looked up, briefly, and smiled while running his thumb over his lips and pressing it into his mouth. I knew he didn't care for rude language, but he was pushing for it now.  
Suddenly he lowered his mouth back to the head of my cock and opened his lips to close them around the tip. He was hot and wet and skilled when he hollowed his cheeks and tightened around me. He took me in further and I whimpered, feeling his hot, slick mouth against the overly sensitive flesh of my cock. 

The back of my head dug into the rug when I arched my back into the touch and one of my hands tugged on the silky strand on his forehead. He responded by sucking me down further and I cried out when he swallowed around me, tight, hot. Strings of pleasure left my toes curled and my lips parted and wet. I felt surrounded, enveloped, devoured by him. And if there was a cannibal joke in there somewhere I was too far gone to notice.

“Shit," I cursed, my voice raspy with the strain, when his tongue swirled up from the underside of my length, following the thick veins between bobs of his head. He would have to forgive me any profanities at this point. He hummed around me, rubbing the vibrations of his throat against the tip and my neck started to protest from alternating between being lifted to look down at him and arching back with my eyes squeezed tight in pleasure.

He lifted his mouth a couple of inches and wrapped his hand around the now exposed part of my cock. His fingers rubbed against the wet, soft yet hard skin as he pumped it in rhythm with the movement of his mouth. Slowly up and down again as his swollen lips slid down my achingly hard cock. There was no doubt in my mind he craved to see just how far he could push me. “Fuck.” 

He squeezed, punishing me, and released me when I whined out my despair. “Shh.” he hushed against my sensitive skin before sliding his lips over the head again. His silk hair fell into maroon eyes, but my fingers pushed it back so I could continue to look at him.

That connection was important. For me as well as him; his eyes kept searching mine as much as mine did his. One hand in his hair, and one hand pressed into my mouth as I bit on the side of my palm to keep from crying out. It didn't matter, it was no use to try and keep the noises in. I saw constellations of stars while his beautiful mouth worked over me, picking up the pace just a little with every stroke. 

He continued to play with me as he let his tongue slide around the head, the slit, the pulsing veins down and up again while his mouth covered me tightly. Swallowing around me occasionally to get me inside him further. I watched the muscles of his strong, naked back rippling, the push and pull of his long, smooth throat and the muscles of his supporting arms bulging. I could watch him for hours, but the tight heat and the wet glide of his soft lips took me over. I cried out, I whimpered, I groaned, and with every noise that left my throat he rewarded me with hollowed cheeks and tightened lips. Encouraged by my complete surrender.

One hand was placed on my jerking hips, one hand enveloped the base of my erection. Faster now, picking up the pace as he took me in deeper and deeper and tightened his mouth and hand around me. “Fuck, Fuck, Fuck,” I chocked, helpless now as my balls drew up tight against my body and the roaring heat inside screamed for release.

His eyes were on me, barely blinking, and I knew he wanted to watch me through it as he slid my cock over and over past those pink, moist lips, while his tongue stroked me and his hot, dangerous mouth sucked me in deeper and tighter. I felt it crawling to the surface. Deep, primal pleasure boiling from my deepest core. Like never before.

Every muscle in my body tightened as my orgasm hit me mercilessly. It yanked, ripped, tore my insides out, to heaven and back. All the pleasure seemed wrung from ever pore, white hot and blinding, as I bucked and released into his mouth. Gasping and clawing and tearing at the rug, his back and his hair as he held my hips down to prevent me from choking him.

I was quivering, naked and spent, on my back on the rug. The shadows of the flames danced over my wrecked form as I watched him releasing my oversensitive cock from his hand and lips. He placed one hand on my chest and climbed back up my body with a flushed face, black eyes and teeth sharp where they showed from behind his lips. He looked gratified, serene, as if he wasn't still completely hard and ignored between his thighs.

He looked at me with fire and I looked back, out of breath and hazed. Those eyes, they latched on to me hungrily, running over my flushed cheeks, my parted lips, the damp curls sticking to my forehead. One finger followed to trail after his gaze and rested on the underside of my chin when he pushed our lips together. It was a soft press, not enough to taste myself, but I pulled my own fingers around his angular jaw in return and lead him closer. It was, ridiculously enough, the most daring thing I had done between us. Pulling him to me. Asking him, silently, not to leave.

He pressed closer and I felt his chest hair rubbing against my side. It had never been like that. It had always been soft breast and long hair. Delicate hands and tender mouths. Touches that had made me sigh and smile instead of grunt and claw and grit. I watched him then, looking at the barely-there pull at his lips and the hint of squinting eyes and read him like only I every could. Proud, pleased, predatory. I dared, in a moment of bravery, to slide my hand between us, down his belly and into his well-groomed pubic hair, but warm fingers closed over mine and brought them to his lips.

“You were always so good at hiding, Will,” he said, a hint of teeth and fondness peeking through and his lips kissing every knuckle between his words “Behind glasses and hair and flannel, in your lonesome little house in the woods.” He turned my hand to kiss my palm. “But I see you,” he smiled, a rare smile.”Like you see me.” Our hands entwined between our chest. “It doesn't matter if you can't find the words. I can still hear them.” A thumb brushed over my eyelids, steady and gentle, and I release a shivering breath. He knew I was afraid.

He lay down beside me, our hands clasped as he pressed up behind me. We breathed in tandem, slow and deep and I don't know when I drifted off to sleep. I only know I woke up in my own bed, alone. What I do remember, is lying in the dark with him, wondering if he thought I was solely afraid of touching him or if he knew the truth. That my heart was burning black for him. Scorching and eating away at me, consuming everything about me I had once valued most. What terrified me, was to love him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so so so much for reading! I really hope you guys like it! :-D  
> https://www.tumblr.com/blog/katherinekrawl


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You're in love with me,” I said. No longer a question. My breathing quickened, high up in my chest. My heart was heavy and thick in my ears and heat spread around my ribs like licking flames. His eyes were almost unbearable on me, like thumbs pressing on my sockets. “You didn't need an answer to that question,” he said to me, and his slowing pace came to a halt. He pulled the glove from his right hand and took a single step closer to reach out and trace my scarred cheek with his thumb. His skin felt hot against the cold that had seeped into my flesh. Everything about him was real, scorching, beautiful and painful, horrifying and alluring, like it had ever been.“God...” I sighed, closing my eyes at his bare touch. “I don't know what it means when you say that.”

That morning was different. We eyed each other over breakfast. We talked about the weather and even brushed the news in the local paper. He smiled and my heart stuttered. “Would you care to join me for a walk? The area is breathtaking,” Hannibal proposed, and I realized it would be the first outdoor activity together since we'd moved here. “Sure,” I said, like it had never been any different.

The area really was beautiful. One of these days I would ask Hannibal where it was we were, exactly. And maybe I would go with him, into the town or another nearby village. Not yet. Not now. But soon, maybe. We were both clad in woolen coats, cashmere scarves and leather gloves. Formal, he had picked them out for us, but efficient against the Icelandic weather. We walked a trail through the nearby woods that he already seemed familiar with and I got lost in the scattered arrangement of birch and willow trees towering around us. The air was cold, but there was no wind to bite it into our cheeks, and up ahead the sky looked like an oil painting made with blues and grays and white clouds that, everlasting, threatened to become heavy and dark. 

Hannibal walked beside me in a steady pace. His leather hands inside his coat pockets. Plum-purple wool covering his broad shoulders. One strand of his silver hair escaped the neat back comb, occasionally falling into his eyes as the wind tugged it in various directions. I had never seen him look so serene. 

I wasn't feeling cold, but I did wonder how it would feel to slide my hands inside his coat, around his waist and feel the warmth inside the fabric. To be enveloped by it, embraced, and to smell the earth and rain that seemed permanently etched into his skin.

“Will,” he said, startling me. I looked at him and saw a watchful glint in his eyes. The browns and reds swirling there were a sharp contrast against the icy sky. “We never did talk,” he took his hands from his pockets to clasp them behind his back. He never stopped walking but slowed his pace accordingly and never seemed to doubt I would adjust to him. Naturally, I did. We never did talk. Inside, I felt a flutter. 

“Bedelia said that I am in love with you,” he said, matter-of-factly, as if our last conversation hadn't been interrupted by him taking me into his mouth. My permanent inside flutter jumped in my throat and my cold cheeks started to heat. I both dreaded and yearned to learn where this was heading. “Yes,” I answered, swallowing my nerves, but looking at the trees instead of his profile beside me. Every breath became deliberate, aware.

“When was this?” He asked, casually inquisitive, but genuinely curious of when such a conversation could have taken place. I almost smiled at his concealed boyishness. “Does it matter?” I said, briefly meeting his gaze. He looked back, thoughtfully, and shook his head. “The outcome wouldn't change,” he said. 

I heard his words. I felt them too. I looked at him and what I saw was bare, near-crushing devotion pulsing from his sanguine eyes. I felt my legs unsteady underneath my weight.

“You're in love with me,” I said. No longer a question. My breathing quickened, high up in my chest. My heart was heavy and thick in my ears and heat spread around my ribs like licking flames. His eyes were almost unbearable on me, like thumbs pressing on my sockets. “You didn't need an answer to that question,” he said to me, and his slowing pace came to a halt. He pulled the glove from his right hand and took a single step closer to reach out and trace my scarred cheek with his thumb. His skin felt hot against the cold that had seeped into my flesh. Everything about him was real, scorching, beautiful and painful, horrifying and alluring, like it had ever been.“God...” I sighed, closing my eyes at his bare touch. “I don't know what it means when you say that.”

He traced the line of my cheekbone. I opened my eyes again. “All the things you did to me...” I said. I remembered the unconventional therapy, Baltimore's hospital, Randall Tier, Abigail, the knife in my gut, the saw on my forehead, the Dragon... I remembered it all. He smiled, arcanely, and cupped my chin between his thumb and finger. “All the things you did to me,” he said. “And here I am... And there you are.” Matthew Brown, Freddy Lounds, my betrayal in Baltimore and my betrayal in Florence. My betrayal on the cliff. Alana had called our relationship destructive. She hadn't known how destructive it really was.

“You've made me vulnerable, Will,” he said, “I wasn't quite sure how to adapt to that.” He chuckled at a private joke and ran his fingers along my jawline until he held one side of my face in his hand. “I wanted you to see yourself as I see you. I wanted you to become who you are destined to be.”

I pushed into his touch, cold skin against the hot palm of his hand. “I am not, now,” I said. “Maybe I'll never be that.” He blinked, slowly, beyond me, and looked down as if he was moving something within himself. “I only ever wanted to be close to you, Will,” he said, looking back at me and pushing his fingertips lightly into my skin. Eyes bright, red and brown, earth and fire. Had I been any less stubborn than he liked me for, I would have surrendered to him now.

“I will never be safe with you,” I said and bit my lip to hide the defeat behind my words. My fingers briefly touched the scar on my forehead, but his hand took them away and rested his own forehead against mine. “You will never be whole without me,” he almost whispered and my breath hitched as I closed my eyes and felt his warmth seeping into me.“I know that,” I said. “I've lived it.” I had lived it for three long years. “We both have,” he said as he pulled back to look at me.

“Do you want me to take your doubts away?” He asked, framing my face with both his broad hands and smiling part of his teeth bare. “Do you think I can?” He shook his head. “No. I can't.” He answered himself. “Because there is no doubt.” Fingers stroked my temples on both sides. “And because of that, there's guilt.” 

I swallowed and tried to look away, but he held my head, cradling it, protectively. “Your wife, your child, Alana, Jack...” he said, stabbing with every word, “...and me.” At his last words, he pressed a small kiss to my lips, as if he was honored to be among those names. “I wonder if it's your guilt eating away at you,” he spoke softly against my lips, “or the lack of it.” I gasped into him, pushing closer. Everything he said hurt. But nothing had hurt as much as living without him.

“You don't wonder. You never wonder,” I said and he smiled on me, lips to lips. “I do with you,” he said. “You are the only one who can surprise me.” He released my jaw, but stayed as near. I did too.“By throwing us both off a cliff?” I asked and he cocked his head to the side. He would have shrugged, if he would ever do such a thing. “It was a grand gesture,” he said, with a smile that was almost fond, “I happen to like grand gestures.” I huffed, nodded and tucked my scarf further into my coat. “Well, that's it from me,” I said. “I've got no more grand gestures up my sleeve.”

I didn't miss the hint of teasing in his eyes when he stepped away from me. “I beg to differ,” he said, before we continued our walk, side by side and mostly silent.

**

After dinner, we retreated to the library. He was drawing on the sofa and I pretended to read in an arm chair. I looked at him whenever I dared, and quickly averted my eyes when he caught me. It was a teenagers' game I had never played before, but realized I couldn't stop.

“I'm going to my room,” I said, 5 minutes to 10. It was early, but that was the intention. He looked up from his drawing, watching me, calculating. No doubt wondering if I just wanted an early night. “Will you....will you join me?” I asked, suddenly flustered and cursing my own fidgeting. He smiled at me, endeared at first, before the heat of his eyes swept over me. The book was closed and placed on the side table. He stood and walked towards me, shirt and slacks, and offered his hand to help me up. A strong hand with tanned skin, thick veins and neatly trimmed nails. 

I looked up at him, briefly, and quickly looked back at his hand when I felt my cheeks burn. He was collected as ever he was. Not a hair out of place. Not a muscle uncontrolled. My own nervousness embarrassed me, but then my emotions had always betrayed me. We were opposites in as many things as we were the same, I knew. I used his hand for support, lifting myself upright from the chair. He didn't step back to give me space, and I found my chest barely inches away from his. The nearness was sudden, still not yet familiar, and I inhaled sharply at the puffs of warm breath on my ear when he touched our temples together. His heat and scent blended with mine and my eyes closed at the intimacy behind his careful search for nearness.

“There is no need to be afraid, Will,” he said, deep and gently, against the shell of my ear. His hand slid over my chest and rested over my sternum, undoubtedly feeling the increased heart rate under my white shirt and skin. He smiled, a stretch of lips against the side of my cheek, and curled his fingers loosely into the fabric. “It's all right to want this,” I breathed against him, sighing into his hair, and shivered involuntarily at his words. His hand tightened on my shirt and I chuckled in my deficiency. “Why am I the only one who is affected by this?” I said, deflated, and felt him pulling back. I would have noticed I had flattened a few strands of his hair with my face, had I been able to look past the tilt of his curvy lips and the hint of teeth. “Not at all, Will,” He said, and took my hand in his to place it against his shirt, his chest, his heart. I could feel it thumping in his chest, steadily increased, warm and alive. Just like mine.

“My heartbeat rarely rises,” he said, pressing his fingers upon mine and forcing my hand fully to his chest. I remembered him asking me if my heart rate had increased when I 'killed' Freddy Lounds. Did your heart race when you murdered her? His never did. “But it does when I'm near you, like this,” he looked at me and I leaned closer into his chest. “I'm not afraid, Will,” he brushed a thumb over my bottom lip. “But I have never been more vulnerable than I am with you.” He smiled, pulling up one corner of his lips. It was brief, but I felt the pain, the yearning, the pinch of desperation, tangled in his words. I saw it pouring openly from his eyes, and felt my own clew of emotions clawing in my chest in a violent response. It was a matter of seconds before my lips met his.

“Your room,” he said between heated kisses, where necks strained to push closer, wet lips slid against wet lips and bodies pulled and pressed into a tangle. He hadn't forgotten my request for him to join me there, but my insides now turned weak at the image of us doing this in a room with a bed. We never had before. 

He led me, my hand smaller in his, down the hallway and up the stairs into my room. Without needing to, I closed the door behind us and before I turned back to him, I watched my hand twitching unsteadily on the door handle. There were so many things I ought to remember right now. I ought to remember Molly and Wally, Italy, Abigail. I wanted to recall how I had felt, locked behind bars, strapped to a chair, bleeding on the floor. I should have wanted to hold on to all of those memories, to become the man that would make his life choices with the wisdom found in life experiences. But right now, more than right and wrong, more than ever, I wanted nothing between us and everything behind us.

I felt his heat through the clothes on my back. I felt it seeping into the back of my legs even before he had pressed against me. Warm, solid, with soft hair falling against the side of my forehead and strong hands on my shoulders. “Don't go in there,” he said, once again, fingers traveling up my neck to my temples. “Stay with me.” And this time I let my head fall back into his touch. “Yes,” I agreed and inhaled sharply when his nose and mouth pressed into my neck and nipped at the skin with lips and teeth. I felt his hot breath on my jaw, his lashes on my ear and his fingers between my ribs.

I closed my eyes and moaned when his hips connected with the swell of my ass through thin layers of clothing, and arched back into him. His hands ran down to my stomach with fingers pushing up my shirt. When I slumped under his searching mouth and pushed back against his erection against the cleft on my ass, he growled, flipped us, turned me and backed me onto the bed. “Fuck, Hannibal,” I cursed, when my back hit the mattress so hard my head bounced back up. And he was there, glowing with mirth and want and sweat, on top of me. 

His mouth found mine, tearing at my lips and tongue with dominant tugs and gentle teeth. My fingers carted through his hair, shuddering and unwilling to let him go, pressed into the mattress under his weight. His fingers ran past the buttons of my shirt, working them open with precision, without haste. I tried his in return, with clammy, aimless hands, but he helped me wordlessly before he took my hand and kissed my knuckles.“Nebijokite, mano mylimasis.” He said against the palm of my hand with his foreign tongue, closing his eyes and nuzzling the skin. I did not know what he said, but I felt it, on that patch of skin where my fingers came together, where his teeth grazed and his lips touched.

His chest was bare, his shirt abandoned while mine still hung open on my shoulders. My fingers ran through coarse, gray hair and his belly pressed against mine in a slide of skin, scars and muscle. He writhed against me, slowly, and my hips rose to meet him through my jeans and his slacks. It was a dance, and dancing he had always done well. Completely surrendering himself to the moment and the sensation and forcing me to do the same. He had always been a master in leading, just as he lead me now.

We kissed and touched wherever our lips and fingers reached. Hard muscles, sharp angles and hair were still so foreign under my hands. It was all new, I had barely touched his naked skin like this before, but now I was free to. The slide of skin and hair and sweat and musk was hard and real, earth and dirt and fire, and it opened every tip of every nerve underneath my skin. It was a revelation. My back arched up when I felt him rolling his hips against the inside of my thigh and it sent prickles of pleasure up my spine and down my legs. His hands slid over my ribs, down my scar, to undo my the button of my jeans. I felt it when our eyes met, and he undressed me and undressed me, until my very soul laid bare before him.

His lips brushed against the bridge of my nose, tenderly, as if to soothe me when I trembled. One hand pressed against my abdomen, feeling the muscle rippling underneath the skin at the tightening of my groin and I groaned at the wicked pressure he applied, just where it mattered. He then lifted my lower body, strong hands on my hips, off the mattress just enough to slide down my jeans over my legs.

Air pressed from between my teeth when he slid the fabric of my boxers over my hips and bared me to his eyes and the naked air around us. My cock was already shining with pre-cum, throbbing and begging and a red shade of purple. The way his breath hitched in his throat when he looked down my body was enough for my fingers to clench in the sheets beneath me. I affected him. A rare and beautiful thing to witness firsthand. His breath stroked my nose, his lips kissed my chin, and he was down again to remove my jeans and boxers to my ankles and off my feet. He slid out of his own slacks and underwear, both navy blue, and I watched him in return. He was hard and thick with dark, raised veins, almost visibly pulsating. For a moment, it terrified me. But that wasn't all it did. 

I reached for him and he came back. His hands trailed up my calves, my hips, my chest. He settled between my legs, heavy and whole as he laid against me. He didn't pin me down, he didn't push, but pressed gently, skin to skin. Bare and warm. He smiled, eyes dark like dirt and fingers brushing curls out of my eyes. He breathed. “Is this..?” He started. “Yes,” I said without air, quicker than he could finish his sentence. I chuckled, unsteady, and watched him. He looked so pronounced, against the white of my ceiling. 

My fingertips danced over his arms and chest, feeling the muscles underneath vibrating in answer to my touch. Hard planes, strong and broad. “I've never done this with a man,” I said, flushed and breathless when his hands smoothened over the tendons in my throat. His fingers paused on my pulse, racing, jumping, and he smiled. “I've never done this without an ulterior motive.” To emphasize 'this', he lowered his hips and pressed his erection next to mine on my belly. 'God.' It was a wet slide of hot, soft, hard flesh. He rocked, ever so slightly, against me and I tried to fight the urge to grab hold of him and pull down.

His lashes fluttered, his lips parted, he was magnificent. I moaned when he pushed and shifted his hips, touching me, grazing me. “And what might your sole motive be?” I asked, grunting through the words as I buckled up into him. “Will,” he hissed, nipping sharply at my throat, “my sole purpose from here on will be to have you, all of you, and to keep you.” He spoke between bites on my skin and my hands clawing at his back. Desperation and passion tearing at one another. “And for you to want the same.”

His hips touched mine, our hard cocks brushed together and my legs drew up against his hips. I buried my lips into his hair, inhaling deeply. “I will never give what I don't get equally in return,” I warned, biting his ear. His shoulders shivered under my touch, at my words, and I felt him trying to bury himself deeper against me. I rolled my hips up as he pushed down and we both clung to the feeling, the angle just right. The soft skin, the slick head, the hard length brushed against mine, close and real and hot. Intimate. He bit back a moan in my neck and I cried, pulling at his hair in a blind search for balance. 

I gasped his name when we did it again and his mouth captured mine with a tender fury. Feverish searching lips, yet languid strokes of tongue. A low groan escaped through his nose, freely meeting my thrusts as he rutted against me. Discomposed and savage like he rarely showed. 

Uncut, the soft foreskin pushed back over the already slick head with every stroke, and the friction against my sensitive flesh was maddening. Almost painful in the cruelest kind of glorious pleasure. I felt him all around me now. Everything of him was on me as we moved together, glistening with the sweat shining on both our bodies and sharing as we touched. 

He tasted dark, cognac and roast and smoke on my tongue. His soft hair brushed against the back of my hands as I held onto his back and shoulders where his muscles pushed and fell against my fingertips. His balls, tight against his body, grazed mine with every push of his hips. The short curls on his chest brushed the bare skin on my collarbone and the hair at the base of his length, short and coarse, grazed my abdomen with every role of his hips. It was a soft friction that brought scratching tingles to my skin. 

I was drowning in the slide of skin, the grunts and moans, the shared breaths and heat. The stream of pumping blood under our skin. Velvet, wet bliss, that stilled the never-ending noise in my head. I gasped his name, hot and wet against my neck, when I clenched my legs around him to follow after his hips. When he pulled his head back, I could see his eyes, dark and warm and hazed like a summer sunset, sparkling like a sunbeam on the sea. One hand slid under my hips and I was helpless against the urge to look between our bodies and see my hips snapping up to meet his thrusts, my hard cock meeting and sliding with and against his. I groaned, lost at the sight, until his fingers slid into my hairline, meeting dark, damp curls, and tightened. 

He held me, forcing me to look at him as we rocked repeatedly against each other.  
Still gentle, but stronger and harder with each stroke as we both searched and needed more and found it with each other. The friction of the soft flesh sliding over hardness became slicker with every stroke as both him and me leaked pre-cum between our bodies. The rhythm of our hips was steady and strong, entangled in a powerful dance of pleasure and warmth. Closer than any dance we had shared. 

I grunted in surprise when he hooked his arms around my shoulders and rolled us to the side, face to face, knees to knees. He rolled his hips, once, twice, where we were slotted together, before he rolled onto his back and pulled at my hips to bring me on top. I towered over him, unexpectedly, and saw him under me, looking up. Openly worshiping, with eyes and hands that brushed my inner thighs and belly. We were scarred, flesh and souls, but right now it barely showed. I finally shed the shirt from my shoulders and felt his hands traveling up my sides and over my chest. Hair in his eyes and teeth in lips. He was lost in me, openly. I straddled his hips with squeezing inner thighs, lined up his thick length against my flushed, hard cock and thrusted down as he pushed up. Forward, pressed against his lower abdomen and mine.

It didn’t take much time for me to rejoice in the newfound control this position gave me. The pace and rhythm of our bodies was led by me, and shamelessly, I picked up the speed and force of grinding bodies. It was unbearable, and I wanted more. Sliding both our erections together against my belly, I reached down to grasp us both in one hand. It was a tight fit, me against him, and I started stroking us along with the pumps of my hips. “Oh,” I breathed, lost in the new slick tightness around us. He agreed by roaming his hands over my back, my chest, my stomach. Eyes beneath a golden shimmer of the lights' reflection while stroking me with whole hands and the occasional hint of nail against my skin. I rubbed us together, somewhere between passionate and merciless, until he dragged me down and searched my lips. No longer open mouths, but repeated brushing of lips with every thrust as he stretched his neck to get as much as he possible could of me. His eyes closed, his lips parted and his body flushed. He was an earthy vision of carnality. I wondered, not without fear, what it would be like to be taken by him. Or to take him in return.

My knees were pushing against the mattress as his heels dug into the edge of the bed, and the wooden frame creaked sinfully around us as we rocked. I could feel my balls pressing against his with warm, heavy weight and I pumped my hand tighter around our lengths and heads when his hands grabbed my hips, forcing me to meet him harder, closer. His larger cock rubbed along the length of my begging erection, and I felt something drawing tight inside of me. I stroked us together, hard, fast and I pushed us both into my abdomen. He pushed back against me and I was done. “Oh, oh fuck,” it was sudden, like falling off another cliff. I grabbed hold of one of his arms, tight, and buried my nose in the hollow of his throat.

He was as close as I was, clawing at my hair and back. Gone, like me. “Will,” He gasped, undone, and I felt my balls tightening and my hand stuttering around us. My seed spurted over his stomach and chest as I felt my orgasm curling around my insides like a hot blaze of intensive smoke. I tensed and trembled from the harsh, acute and tightening pleasure that bled up to the tip of my ears and down to the tip of my toes. Coiling, trashing violently inside as I cried out soundlessly against his skin.

He tightened underneath me, thrusted up two more times and followed me before the white drops of my release had even stopped spilling onto his abdomen. He came, silently and powerful with curling toes and teeth pressed in lips. He went rigid and spilled on both our stomachs, hard and lasting. I watched him as his nails dug into my hips and my fingers left marks on his upper arm. I shuddered again and again at the sight of him underneath me. It was pure divinity. 

We were quiet, then. Still and breathing into the peace that followed. Pressed together on the bed, naked in the semi-dark. Our chests rose and fell and fingers loosened on wakened muscles and warm skin as we both tumbled into the glow.

Our sticky bodies pressed together, but I didn’t care. He would. He would go into the bathroom and get us a towel, soon. Soon, but not now. Now he was simply stroking his hands through my damp hair, with my head in the crook of his neck and my lips pressed against the damp skin of his collarbone. There was a light kiss against my temple.

Neither of us remembered when we fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU to all the people who left me these amazing comments and kudos and bookmarks!! :-D You guys have noooo idea how happy they make me! Really, this is such a motivation for me to keep going! Thank you all so much for giving me a chance and reading my work! I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! More very soon! Love! <3
> 
> “Nebijokite, mano mylimasis.” = Don't be afraid, my beloved.
> 
> https://www.tumblr.com/blog/katherinekrawl


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What would you have done, had you succeeded in killing me?” I asked him between bites, and his fork lingered on his lips. “I would have eaten you,” he said without hesitation. I blinked repeatedly, fingering the stem of my glass. “No, yes, I mean...after I was gone,” I said and he paused, placing his fork back on the table .“I would have lived my life,” he said, matter-of-factly, his eyes lingering on mine as he took a sip of his wine.

“Come to the opera with me tonight,” Hannibal said during next morning's breakfast. I winced visibly, closing my teeth on my fork with scrambled eggs. “The opera?” I said, disbelieving. “That's what you do when you leave me at the house?” His eyebrows pulled under his morning hair and I flinched at how domestic that had sounded. We were both in our bathrobes and slippers, reading the morning paper, and now I seemed to have taken on the role of the nagging housewife. All that was missing were pink curlers in my hair. “I hardly force you to stay, Will,” he corrected me and the toe of his slipper nudged mine under the table.

“I thought you were out killing,” I said, casual enough, and his lips stretched into a smile. “Sometimes,” he said. “Sometimes I go to the opera, sometimes both. Sometimes I just go shopping for groceries.” Teeth flashed through parted lips, turning his smile into a grin that he hid behind his coffee cup.

“You know I don't really care for it,” I said, cutting into my bacon. I had gone to the opera twice in my life, and it seemed little more than a club house for the elite, showcasing to other elites how exclusive they all were amidst music and art more than half only pretended to appreciate. I knew Hannibal's passion for it was honest, but it had never been for me. He seemed determined, however. “We'll go to dinner first and have drinks after. We can make a night of it,” he said, nearly offhanded as he drank his coffee and turned the page of the newspaper before him. This time I hid my own smile behind my cup. He was really trying, and if I were a schoolgirl, I surely would have swooned.

“We'll be much easier to spot together,” I reminded him, buttering my toast. He closed the newspaper with the accommodating rustling noise, and he leaned forward to place a hand on top of mine. Light but reassuring. “We won't,” he said, visibly pleased with himself, and squeezing my fingers gently. “They know me as Andreas Achterberg there. An eccentric pianist from Germany.” He pursed his lips in hidden pleasure and his fingers tightened around mine. “You can be my latest catch.” His mirth was contagious, and pulled at the corner of my lips. “Am I?” I said, raising both eyebrows before I pulled my hand from under his and bit into my toast, not waiting for a reply. 

“We can equally indulge in your interests,” he offered. “There is a nearby lake we could use for fishing.” I grimaced at the word. His offer was genuine, but I still remembered all those years I'd refused to join Molly and Wally on their fishing trips, and the reason why. “I've lost my appetite for fishing when you made me lures from human remains and framed me for your murders.” I said, looking back at him. Fishing had been tainted a long time ago. It was now only something for me and Abigail, inside my own head. There was a moment of silence.“Join me tonight?” He asked again. “Yes,” I said this time.

**

I ran my fingers through my long curls, trying to fix the helmet hair. We had gone by motorbike, wearing leather over our tuxedo's, and my front had been flat against his back as we sped over the empty roads. It was secretly thrilling, pressed close and flying over asphalt. The smell, the heat, the feel of his solid weight pushing back on me. With my arms around his waist, I was starting to understand the appeal of this form of transportation.

“Your food is better,” I said in the restaurant he picked out for us. The food was top class, as expected from a restaurant Hannibal of his choosing, but his cooking had always been in a league of its own. “You flatter me,” he smiled, plucking tender meat off his fork with his teeth. “Trust me, I have no reason to,” I said, sipping my wine and enjoying the view of the busy street behind the window. I had yet to go into the village nearest where we now lived, but it was clear we were currently in one of the bigger nearby cities. I didn't ask, not yet, but simply enjoyed the way he smiled around the rim of his wine glass. “Well, I always use the freshest, hand-picked ingredients.” He said, and I tried my best to ignore his coy cannibal pun by staring intently at my plate.

I'd ordered steak – thick and bloody, but he had something more his usual style. Probably poached lamb's brains, but I could only guess as he ordered it in French. I looked at the tender slices, soaking in a clear broth, and absently ran a finger over the scar on my forehead. “What would you have done, had you succeeded in killing me?” I asked him between bites, and his fork lingered on his lips. “I would have eaten you,” he said without hesitation. I blinked repeatedly, fingering the stem of my glass. “No, yes, I mean...after I was gone,” I said and he paused, placing his fork back on the table .“I would have lived my life,” he said, matter-of-factly, his eyes lingering on mine as he took a sip of his wine.

I remembered his life without me in Florence. It was luxury, culture, food and dancing. It was everything he indulged in. “With Bedelia du Maurier,” I said, remembering that part most of all. “Perhaps,” he agreed and I knew he was watching my eyes narrowing. I looked at my plate, barely tasting the food anymore. I only looked up when his fingers brushed my knee under the table.  
“It doesn't matter with whom. It doesn't matter where or how,” he said when I looked back up at him. “I would have lived my life just like I have lived it these past three years without you. I would have lived it like you have lived it without me,” he pressed his fingertips into the back of my knee.

“Wanting,” I said. 

“Yes.” He agreed. 

**

The opera building was large, imposing and crowded. I didn't care for any of these things. We walked in, elbows brushing. He offered me his arm when we arrived, but I declined in fear of drawing unnecessary attention. Hannibal greeted some people with a nod of his head and a smile that didn't belong to him. Per usual, they all seemed pleased to see and know him. He must have felt my reluctant attitude towards socializing, because he didn't stop to talk to anyone but a singular man, standing by the excessive, indoor fountain. He was in his sixties with thinning gray hair on top of his round head, plump and flushed from the whiskey in his hand. His tuxedo was rather too small around the waist and showed too much wrist and ankle. “Bernard, my condolences,” Hannibal said, walking up to the man with an outstretched hand that was enthusiastically received and shaken. “Thank you, Andre. It's such a tragedy,” Bernard replied, remembering to look sad only half way through the sentence. “Absolutely. Glad to see you here tonight,” Hannibal added, smiling encouragingly while he wiped the remains of clammy hand on the side of his leg. I noticed he had altered his accent a bit, making him sound convincingly German. He introduced me as his American friend, Jonathan Fisher, and pulled me to a singular table when all hands were shaken.

“Who died?” I asked after I'd thanked him for the whiskey he brought me from the bar. “His wife. Only 53 years old,” he said, sipping his wine and pursing his lips. “Oh,” I said and offered the appropriate grimace. “What happened?” 

I followed his eyes over to Bernard who was receiving the appropriate attention and drinks as a consolation for his loss. “I brought her home for dinner,” Hannibal said, blunt but casual, his lips against the rim of his glass. My eyes widened in response as I whipped my head back towards him and coughed up my whiskey, burning my throat in the effort. “Jesus.” His hand patted between my shoulder blades in an effort to soothe my lungs. “She was a very disagreeable woman,” he said, pulling up his nose in distaste. “But agreeable enough with some peaches and thyme, as you might recall.” I closed my eyes and breathed in deep. I did recall. It had been a most successful meal. I tried to feel disturbed, angry or surprised, but when none of it came I simply looked at Bernard. “He doesn't seem too shaken,” I said. “Like I said, she was disagreeable,” Hannibal replied smugly.

** 

The opera was dull. I forgot the name, the storyline and the composer. I didn't care. This wasn't for me. But Hannibal soaked in every note and every ridiculous vibrato. It was an endearing sight. His face, fluttering eyelids and lips agape, his fingers tightening on his armrest. I had never been one for open adoration, but I enjoyed watching him much more than anything else here. I was enthralled. I figured this, the opera, was for him, what my dogs had been for me. A light alleviation in a world of darkness. It was a particular brand of innocence that I missed, but had no doubt would eventually find its way back into my life again, when there was room for it. 

Being with Hannibal there was no alleviation from the darkness. He was what made my darkness dark, heavy and bitter. The kind of bitter that makes it hard to taste anything else, until it becomes a flavor your tongue remembers. Craves. Like dark chocolate and black coffee. It becomes something you can't be without, because it makes everything else taste bland in comparison.  
I watched him stand and applaud. I saw the tear streaks on his cheeks. He was beautiful. “What did you think?”`He asked me afterwards. “It's not my thing,” I answered him honestly. “Will you come with me again?” He asked, smiling. “Yes,” I promised him.

**

I felt an audacious stab of satisfaction when his back hit the wall next to the front door and I heard his surprised gasp at my sudden boldness. Blindly, he grabbed hold of the small window frame next to his head to keep himself steady, shoulders tensed and eyes wide. They were brown and yellow under the porch light, gleaming like Tiger's eye.

On our way back home, my mind still a little hazy from the wine and whiskey, and my body pressed closely against his I had felt the nudge of a new type of courage inside me. Lost in the image of him at the opera, enraptured and palpable against his velvet seat, I'd suddenly wished to do something I had never desired or dared to do before. I wanted to bring Hannibal to his knees, and I wanted to do it by going on mine. The thought had made me press one hot cheek against his leather-clad back and my fingers into the seams of his sides.

Why it had to be outside, I didn't know. For that I blamed the whiskey. I walked behind him on the poorly lit porch, adrenaline pumping wildly through my veins, and I grabbed his shoulders to spin him around and push him against the solid bricks. His gasp, his eyes, his fingers clenching on the window frame, it was all fuel for a roaring fire that had started in my belly. Lost to feverish excitement and nerves at the prospect of what I was now determined would happen, I closed the distance between us with two big, hasty steps. 

He swallowed when I trapped his body with mine, and I watched his throat bobbing when I leaned in and pressed closer, harder against him. It aroused me, cock swelling inside my layers of clothing, to see the effect I had on him. The power it gave _me_. I pressed my hands against his shoulders and knees to his knees. My legs were wobbling beneath me, but I felt empowered by the lost, wild fire that I saw spreading through his eyes.  
   
”Will,” he said, hoarse and deep, with a thrilling agony. Seeing him like this with his mouth open, eyes blown wide and hair gloriously disarranged, felt oddly but deliciously satisfying. His skin flushed so beautifully, the sight left me with a tingle I could feel all the way inside my teeth. It was a pleasant, nervy scratch, like fizz in a newly opened bottle against your lips. I vowed to make that flush spread from head to toe. I vowed to make him feel what I had felt, trapped under him.  
   
I ran two hands over his leather-cover chest, pushing lightly to keep him in place. Want had replaced the initial surprise, and he looked me over with a gaze so heated I could feel it blazing blistering hot across my skin. It was dripping with his open adoration, his affection, his devotion. He wanted me. He had always wanted me. Seeing him so clearly made me understand he had never hid those feelings for me, rather I had always refused to see them. Because I couldn't understand them at first, and now understood them too well. Hannibal never offered roses without thorns. He never offered love without death.

His hands tugged lightly at my jacket to bring me even closer, showing me what he wanted without demanding control. Both of us were flushed from the ride and poorly lit in the weak porch light. Our hair was long enough to graze our necks, our skin was paler from the months of healing and lack of sun. He had never looked more touchable. He had never been more ethereal. His long fingers reached out to graze the exposed skin of my neck with the warm tips and pushed into my hair. He was trying me, seeing how far I would let him go without claiming back my power, wanting nothing more than for me to defeat him.

I shuddered before taking both his hands into mine and off my body. Pushing them to the wall next to his head and feeling him flex his muscles in a weak attempt to resist. He was stronger than I was, but he let himself be weakened by my need to overpower him, and in return, his need to be overpowered by me. Eyes like boiling blood pulled at me and I let myself push harder and stronger against him. The following gasp was as satisfying as his fluttered eyelids.  
   
I could feel sharp hips pushing into my abdomen, and with his hands pressed to the wall, I closed the air between us and made him surrender to a kiss. It was raw and sharp and real, against the brick wall, under the cobwebs and the lantern light. Breathing heavily, panting into each other as our open mouths pressed together into a wet and burning slide of lips and tongues. He still tasted like the wine, the earth and the rain. I wanted him, so wholly and painfully that I felt overcome by the urge to claw at his chest and make a hole big enough for me to crawl into. 

My hands released his wrists to entangle my fingers in his ashen hair, while his hands cupped my face in the same instant. Fingers pressed gently on my neck as he held up my chin to keep our connection before his large hands slid down under my leather jacket and over my leather clad ass to pull me closer. We brushed together through layers of fabric and I slid my hands out of his hair to the zipper of his leather jacket, pulling at it between toothy nips at his bottom lip. It fell off his shoulders to the cold, dirty ground and his tuxedo jacket followed. The buttons of his shirt were more of a fumble – with our open mouths pressed together, eyes closed into the breathy, needy kiss my fingers worked down every single one until I could see the trail of hair from his navel into his waistband.  
   
I left the white fabric hanging on his shoulders and he sucked in a breath when I let my fingers caress the warm skin of his toned, hairy chest. Already I could map out his body by memory alone. I knew his scars, the veins under his skin, the patterns of hair. I wondered if I had always paid such close attention to him without being aware of it.

Soft skin, not tanned but never pale, stretched over hard, lean muscles that covered his chest and flowed into his still strong but softening waist along a trail of graying hair. I could dream him, just like this. I did. My hands roamed worshiping down and around his torso to grab his firm hips and ass in those leather pants. He groaned, rumbling in my ear, and made the hairs rise on the back of my neck. 

I pulled from our kiss, and pushed my hands flat against his bare chest when he tried to push back against me. I had something else in mind this time. He rose an eyebrow when I leaned back and surprise flashed through those eyes when I grabbed hold of his hair again and pulled his head to one side to expose the bare skin of his slender neck. I pressed my lips against it, tasting him clearly behind his ear, and followed with my tongue and teeth until he clung to my shoulders with a whimper that might have embarrassed him.  
   
I moaned my response against his neck as I sucked demandingly on the smooth skin down his throat and chest. His fingers wound around my curls, in search for something to hold on to. He seemed so desperate for control, squeezing and clawing at me when I scraped his collarbone with blunt teeth. But not this time. He could do nothing but surrender or go inside the house, and he seemed to understand his choices perfectly.  
   
I could see amber flashing lustfully behind fluttering eyelids in the porch light, and silver hair hung wild from my pulling fingers. His front teeth, sharp and glistening, bit down on his flushed bottom lip when I kissed a wet path down to one flat nipple. It was a first for me, being in control of another man's pleasure, but instinct seemed to have taken over me as I closed my lips around the small nub of his tightening flesh. He pulled lightly at my hair in appreciation, moaning low in his throat, and I sucked harder on the sensitive skin to hear him do it again. Brushing it lightly with my teeth as his hips buckled helplessly against me.  
   
“Will,” I heard him rasping above me, and I felt my own cock twitching at the need in his uncontrolled voice. He was so desperate for my next move, he started to sound positively abandoned. I moved to the other nub to give it the same treatment, and provoked the same heated response from the bruising lips between his teeth. He was completely at my mercy and it was as freeing as it was frightening. It was new for us both, this division of roles. He was lost in his ever feared vulnerability. And I was frantic in my need to be good for him, as he had been for me. 

And it was more. I wanted to show him that I wasn't mindlessly his. He was mine, in return.

I took my time kissing a trail down his ribs beneath sensitive skin. Torturing him sweetly with lips and fingers that lasted too long. I wanted to taste all of him properly, now that I had found the courage and the opportunity. Finally I sank to my knees before him in my tight, groaning leather clothes, and felt his hand pushing into my curls. “Will, why don't we take this inside,” he said, urgent and unsteady. I ignored him as my tongue found the toned yet soft flesh of his stomach, and traced the hard muscles underneath.  
   
My lips kissed the quivering skin with wet, open-mouth kisses as I dipped my tongue into his bellybutton. He jerked at the unexpected wetness and I had to place both my hands on his hips to keep him from buckling me over. I could feel he was looking at me from above, but I kept my eyes on his body. I wanted to keep him lost for just another blissful moment. I was in control.  
   
It surprised me, in light of my previous fear and inexperience, how passionate I was about his body. Every touch, taste and sound of him flared my hankering for more and drove me to the edge of something dangerously high. He breathed, hard, when I nuzzled the trail of short hair starting below his navel and disappearing into the black, strained leather of his pants.  
   
I looked up into those stunned, clouded eyes that looked down on me. Gleaming with want and need and urgency drenched in those earthy tones. He needed me. The thought was a pleasure and a pain, running so deep it stretched beyond the moment of here and now. I almost wished to look away, feeling co-dependency running thick and slick as oil between us, but my eyes refused to let him go. This blur of him and me, it had always hurt, and never had I let him go. 

He was glowing in the light, with his parted lips gleaming and his bare chest rising and falling, muscles rippling like waves in water underneath the skin. His fingers loosened in my hair as he looked down at me and I flexed my hands against the quiver that ran through me. My unsteady fingers slid over the silver zipper of his leather pants, stretched out by his already fully hard cock underneath.  
   
I breathed deep, suddenly feeling less courageous and confident in my ability to please him. God, I had no clue what I was doing. His fingers slid from my hair and he stroked them down my neck until his hands cupped my chin to push it up. Forcing me to look at him as my finger hooked itself behind his waistband. His free hand stroked the damp curls out of my eyes as he looked at me. “We don't have to do this, Will,” he said, the tightness of his throat sullying the calm and kindness he tried to emit.

I swallowed, hoping it would drag down the nervous flutters in my belly. “I want to,” I assured him, and I did. I really did. I breathed in and popped the button of the leathers pants, undid the fly. I almost snorted when my unsteady hands revealed his tuxedo dress pants underneath, and he huffed above me in the same spirit. Shortly after, they both pooled around his ankles, followed by his boxer-briefs. 

He was already standing all the way to attention and I almost pitied his painfully hard cock. He was beautifully, angrily red and glistening with pre-cum, but I still took my time to nuzzle his thighs and inhale the scent of pure, dark musk and fire that was him. I felt and heard the rumbling in his chest, either at the feel or the sight of me, but I didn't look up to verify. I sat back on my heels and tentatively stuck out my tongue to lick a wet stroke to the velvet skin of the tip. Then, at his responding groan, I shifted my gaze from his begging cock to his begging eyes and felt my own cock pulsing inside my boxers. The picture he painted above me was gloriously arousing. His hips sticking out, cock hard and heavy, pants around his ankles and his chest exposed with only his white shirt hanging open from his shoulders. Parted lips, plump, moist and swollen. Cheeks flushed and amber eyes closed to slits. Panting with every breath he took and his tousled, damp hair pushed back on his head.

I never realized how sensitive he was and how much he enjoyed being touched. Seeing his open enjoyment gave me some much needed confidence. Encouraged, I licked along his shaft and heard him moaning out his pleasure. He had been vocal before, but the alcohol and change of scenery seemed to have loosened him further. The back of his head rolled against the wall when I closed my mouth around the sensitive head and he grabbed hold of my hair again. Tugging at me in desperation. To either stop, or take him in further. I relaxed my jaw and did the latter.

His cock was already slick and dripping as pearly white drops leaked on my tongue, tasting like salt and bitter smoke and musk. I buried my nose further against him and lapped up his taste while my tongue swirled around the head. I had been afraid not to be skilled at this, but the way he twisted my hair between his fingers quickly made me forget about any insecurities. He moaned, loud and most likely involuntary, and it had me running a hand over my own leather-clad erection as I looked up from my kneeled position on the floor, into his watering, ecstatic eyes.

My lips were around him as our eyes met and I could see what it did to him. His cock twitched between my lips and I moaned around him at the sight of his helpless surrender. Hands clenched into fists. Strangled moans. Trembling knees. I had never seen such a glorious sight in my life. This creature had us all enslaved, once. Now, he was mine. I slid my wet lips over the sensitive skin and made him shudder even harder. I knew he was trying, to no avail, to hold back any noises that rose in his throat, but his eyes never stopped begging me not to let him go. He was lucky, as he had been before, that I had no real taste for cruelty.

I took him in further, making my mouth tighter by sucking in my cheeks. I let my tongue salivate around him so he could easily slip in and out between my lips until the tip hit the back of my throat.  
Back and forth, back and forth, soft lips rubbing over the head and pushing back his foreskin with every pull, I bobbed my head and slid my mouth over him. Hannibal grew restless around me, clawing and pawing at the wall and my head as he stuttered out noises. He lost control so beautifully as I hummed around his shaft in response. 

His head rolled on his shoulder, sometimes thrown back with one hand pressed against his eyes, sometimes forward to watch me working my red lips over him. I grabbed the base of him in my hand to pump it in rhythm and his pleasure was pure, open, corporal in the air around me. So contagious that I shoved my free hand down my pants to pump my aching cock in time with my thrusts. 

I remembered what felt good for me when I touched myself and released him to nip at the soft skin of his balls. “Will,” he hissed and growled and warned when I sucked one into my mouth while my hand kept pumping him in a steady rhythm. I traded it for the other after a little while, and he groaned appreciatively at my effort. My lips closed back over his cock, throbbing with the need for release. Faster and faster, sucking him harder and harder. I could feel my own saliva spilling out of the corner of my mouth as it closed around the hard, big shaft against my throat. His hips were ever so slightly meeting my thrusts as I allowed him to rock against my wet lips, sliding over him faster, deeper and tighter.

He was so close. I could feel it by the way he was breathing and groaning and rocking against the wall. By the way he whimpered as I sucked in my cheeks a little tighter and ignored the spit and pre-cum dripping down my chin as I kept my eyes locked on his to see the bewildered arousal in his eyes looking down.

So close, so very close he was. When I felt his balls tightening, and the rest of his body suddenly clenching, I knew he was where I wanted him. He looked away, threw his head back and banged it against the wall in his approaching release.

The hand on my own cock stuttered when he suddenly released himself with a low growl and spurted into my mouth, hard. His cum hit the back wall of my throat when his hips bucked strongly forward, helplessly spasming in pure bliss. One hand in my hair, the other one over his eyes as he seemed completely and utterly lost in his pleasure.

His seed spilled over my chin, burning its way down my throat and with one final stroke of my erection, I sputtered and gasped around his cock in my mouth at my own release. The pleasure ripped through my body and completely caught me off guard and I fell backwards off my heels onto my ass, releasing him as my belly burned deep with hot, pulsing pleasure. I spilled inside my boxers, against the palm of my hand, and I closed my eyes as my body tensed and trembled in ecstasy.

My loud moan was one of obscene surprise and I sat there on the porch, panting and quivering before I looked up to see him pulling up his pants and sliding down the wall onto the ground next to me. His mouth still open and his eyes still half-lidded and hazy. Still on his high, he searched me blindly with his arms and wrapped his limp arms around me to let my head rest against his shoulder. 

It was dark outside, chilly and moist, but I didn't feel any of it. I pushed my nose into his neck and fisted my fingers in his open shirt. He ran his hands up my jacket, searching bare skin, as he kissed my earlobe. Pulsing, quivering and bathing in our afterglow.

“Will,” was all he sighed against my hair and I crawled deeper into his embrace, knowing he would soon lift me up into the house to rest with me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for making it to chapter 5! :-D That means the world to me! I really hope you enjoyed it and you are willing to come back for chapter 6! ;-) I really love reading your comments, the way you guys spoil me with kindness is beyond anything I hoped for! The next chapter will be up very soon!
> 
> https://www.tumblr.com/blog/katherinekrawl


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was calm on the exterior, save for the tremor underlining my words, but I knew he could recognize a plea when he heard one. There was a silence where he didn't speak, or blinked, or breathed and I continued, pressing my lips together in determination. “There will be no reckoning and no revenge. No more blood spilled between us.” I ran a finger across my forehead. I remembered the bone saw, and how I'd felt it in my teeth when it touched the bone of my skull when he turned it on. I remembered the knife in my pocket at the museum. “No more forgiveness,” I said, voice thick with the memories.

The picture that greeted me when I opened the Tattlecrime website made my finger freeze over the scroll button. It was me, with Molly and Wally, smiling happily into the camera on our camping trip in Washington, two years ago. It was framed by the headline: _'Ex-FBI profiler Will Graham abandons wife and child to help escape notorious serial killer Hannibal the cannibal (?)'_. Certainly one of Freddie Lounds' finest. A real eye catcher, as I had come to expect of her. 

The article itself was nothing more than a series of speculations about the possible scenario that I had helped Hannibal escape, that we had killed The Red Dragon together in some sort of erotic murder dance and that we had now eloped to a faraway country. She'd called us the barbarous boyfriends, the lethal lovers and still her all time favorite, murder husbands. It was just a theory, of course, without a shred of proof. The FBI were on a cold and dead trail about the whereabouts or status of either one of us. We could just as easily be dead, swallowed by the sea. 

But Freddie, being Freddie, had thought of the juiciest, most scandalous possible scenario she could think of and had made it into what was now the most popular article on her website. I wondered if she would ever know that, aside from the erotic dance part, her wild imagination held nothing less than honest truth. Jack might suspect, and Molly, maybe. I pressed my fingers against my lips as my eyes scanned down the many articles dedicated to Hannibal and myself. Some of them were new, some were months old, but this was the first time I had opened Freddie's website since the big-black-box-over-my-genitals-incident. I had read the other news tabloids and had seen our faces plastered on every website, but none of those articles were as outrageous or as right as the Tattlecrime.

Jack had seen this, certainly. Molly too. I wondered, with a pinch of unsuppressed melancholy, what version they believed of what had happened to us. Jack, I knew, would hope for us to be dead, but would never stop searching for proof that we weren't. This was his worst nightmare after all, and he would never again trust his own instincts. Molly, I hoped she believed I was dead. That I'd died for a great cause, a greater good, and that she would remember me just like that. She would have lost another husband, but it would save her the pain of a traitorous one.

“You chose to go with me.” 

I looked up, startled to see Hannibal lingering in the doorway of the sitting room. I hadn't heard him come in and I closed the tab a little too quickly as I looked at him from my armchair. “Yes,” I said, and swallowed when I saw the lines around his mouth twisting with uncertainty. I knew him well enough to see them, or maybe he just didn't try to hide it anymore. “Do you wish you had made a different choice?” He said, evenly enough, but his knuckles around the door frame were white with effort and one corner of my lips turned at his humanity peaking through. There was only one answer.

“There is no different choice,” I said, looking over my shoulder as he stepped over the threshold. “There is no me without you anymore. We figured that out between us.” I watched him as he walked past me and sat across from me in the other armchair. He placed his folded hands in his lap and the setting reminded me entirely too much of his office in Baltimore. “I know,” he said. His eyes flickered back to the abandoned tablet on the table. “But you wish...”, he started, but I cut him off by turning off the screen and tossing it aside. “No,” I said, without hesitation. “There is nothing on there that makes me wish for something else.”

He looked at me, stoic and still, dressed in his gray plaid suit and salmon pink shirt. “Is there something here, that makes you wish for something else?” He asked, almost – almost – like he was back in the role of my old psychiatrist. But this wasn't his office. We were on neutral grounds this time. I smiled and lowered my eyes to the tip of my bouncing shoe, swinging back and forth from my crossed leg. “Hannibal, I can't be without you.” I said, pain and longing in my honesty. “But if we wish for this to...” I searched for the right word, avoiding his eyes, “evolve... I can't play your games anymore.” I breathed in deeply before I met his eyes. “I'm not your design.”

“And I'm not your prey,” he countered, a light tug on the corner of his mouth. I huffed, nodded and pressed my lips together. I too had played those games. Forever the FBI agent, trying to double cross him. Those days seemed like a childhood memory now, clouded, ignorant, laughable. “I will follow you anywhere,” I told him, a waver in my voice. “Hannibal.” His eyes were deep like coffee grind and I shook my head. “I won't ask you to be anything you're not willing or ready to be.” My hands folded on my lap, mindlessly copying his posture. “And I need the same from you.”

I was calm on the exterior, save for the tremor underlining my words, but I knew he could recognize a plea when he heard one. There was a silence where he didn't speak, or blinked, or breathed and I continued, pressing my lips together in determination. “There will be no reckoning and no revenge. No more blood spilled between us.” I ran a finger across my forehead. I remembered the bone saw, and how I'd felt it in my teeth when it touched the bone of my skull when he turned it on. I remembered the knife in my pocket at the museum. “No more _forgiveness_ ,” I said, voice thick with the memories. 

He closed his eyes and inhaled through his nose and I swallowed against the sudden tightness of my throat. “If we are going to do this, you and me, all of that has to end.” My eyes blinked back the raw feeling of tears that burned behind my eyes. “No more person suit. No becoming... No more of us against each other,” I said, breathing deep and hearing nothing but his silence. I watched him looking unseeingly past me, eyes glazed and far away. But he was listening, I knew. This was more important than anything we had shared these past few months. 

“I am not ready to be who you think I am,” I said. “Maybe I never will be.” My voice trembled with the sudden yearning to be just that. To be all that he saw in me, freely. “Right now, all I want to understand is now.” There was a pleading in my voice I couldn't control and I could no longer deny the fear I felt that it wouldn't be what he wanted. “I can't promise you any other version of me than what I am right now,” I said, and I took a deep breath before I asked him what I had wanted to ask him for months on months. “Is that enough, Hannibal?”

It was like I snapped my fingers in front of his face when I called his name. His eyes shot up, his shoulders straightened. He looked at me, wide eyed and confused, and shook his head with a bewildered chuckle. “Will,” he said without air, “I don't think you understand.” His accent dripped thick like syrup around his words and an invisible fist closed around my torso to squeeze me tight. I closed my eyes, briefly, and grabbed one wrist with my other hand. “My dear Will,” he sighed, “do you think it is in my power to do anything but accept you? ”

My eyes opened, connecting with his as I watched a small, pained smile stretching his lips. “I'm yours, Will,” he said, eyes soft and glistering, hazelnut and gold. The invisible hand squeezed harder around my chest, taking my lungs and heart in a vice grip. He blinked once, twice and sighed again. “I am no longer under the illusion I have any power where you're concerned.” His lips twitched. “I tried...,” he said, and his smile was ruefully mischievous. Florence, the Baltimore hospital, I remembered just how hard we did try. “But without you, it's all barren, Will. The art, the food, the kill, it's all the same to me without being able to mirror or counter the experience, the observations and the emotions with you.”

I released a long, tight breath that stuttered its way out and left me feeling light. His words, they felt so much like mine. He swallowed, grimacing against unfamiliar feelings clawing up along the inside of his throat, and I recognized that fight. I had fought it too, every day since we met. “I didn't choose this weakness,” he said, pressing his lips together. “I never desired it, before you.”

 _Before me_ , he said. I felt childish for hearing that part echoing back inside my head. It warmed my fingertips resting against my knees. “You never knew love,” I said, the word tight in my throat. He smiled, ruefully. “I knew love for my family. I never knew this crippling hellfire that is being in love.”

I laughed out loud, helpless to stop it, and let my shoulders shake at the recognition I felt at his words. His smile stretched wider, beyond teeth. “And it's the most destructive, malevolent, wrathful thing I have ever encountered.” 

I looked at him, wrecked and glowing, just like me. “It's beautiful,” I said and watched him recognizing my words. He nodded, once, and unfolded his hands from his lap. “There are no games left to play, Will,” he said, leaning forward. “You win, I win.” 

He rose from the chair and I followed in an instant. “You lose, I lose,” he added, slowly stepping closer until the noses of our shoes touched. I looked at him, eyes burning and flooding, and leaned into the hand that came up to cup my cheek. “I love you,” he said, softly, and I closed my eyes. We stood there, breathing, close. Feeling and sharing the warmth between us. I smiled against the skin of his hand, pressed back welling tears and opened my eyes. “You win,” I said, before pressing our lips together.

**

We did not make it to his bedroom on the first attempt. Our lips met and kept searching each other on our way up the stairs. It was halfway the hallway that I pressed for more by letting my lips nip on the soft, sensitive skin of his ear and neck and his hands started pushing up my shirt when I bit into his earlobe and inhaled deeply the scent of his hair.

The way he felt, the way he smelled, the way his pleasure rumbled from his chest... It was all maddeningly addictive. Enough to make me attack his flesh with my open mouth against all the exposed skin his clothes allowed. Two buttons had been undone and I was already struggling with number three, sucking passionately on the heated skin between his neck and collarbone. He moaned and chuckled and pushed his hands under my clothes as he slowly maneuvered us backwards towards his bedroom.

His fingers pulled appreciatively on my hair when I licked the shell of his ear, desperate to remember how good it could be to simply have our bodies touching like this again. We were no longer testing the waters. We were both in, whole and real and past our ears. This time, I was without the fears. But I was not without the nerves. 

He growled when I scraped his skin with my teeth, and grabbed my waist a little tighter with both his hands. The moment we entered his bedroom, museum-worthy at worst, he spun us around and pressed my back into the closing door, claiming back his much needed control. My mouth opened in a gasp and he wasted no time to claim it with his, pushing his soft lips together with mine, and thrusting his velvet tongue in between. I let myself melt against him when his hands cupped my face to tilt my head enough for him to lick into my mouth. All certainty and fire, thriving in his dominance and I briefly wondered how torturous, in pain as well as pleasure, last night had been for him.

He hummed against my mouth, and I felt my eyes fluttering shut as my hands held on desperately to his shoulders. My need to be with him was more intense than ever, and I shuddered when  
his sharp hips pushed into my lower abdomen while his hands held my face so tenderly I could have wept. He needed me, he wanted me, he cherished and cradled me. He loved me. No more games, he had said. His teeth grazed my lower lip before licking the bruised skin with his tongue and I felt like I was drowning.  
   
Our hips slotted together through our clothes and I felt his growing arousal pressing against my own. We were both frantic, impatient, heated by confessions and unspoken promises. But it was different this time and I knew we both wanted it to last. I wanted it to. Tonight, and then forever. Hot air stroked my cheeks when he started brushing the corner of my mouth, my cheek, my jaw, my nose, my forehead, my temple, with his tender lips. I gasped at the feather light, soft and open mouthed rain of kisses on my warm skin, as he slowly worked his way down my neck. I closed my eyes and felt my insides growing weak when he kissed the spot right next to my ear.  
   
“Beautiful, Will,” he breathed openly against the shell, and I whimpered at the way the words went straight to my groin. My erection was already pushing needfully against his belly behind his plaid suit. I pulled at the hem of his salmon shirt to show him what I wanted; his skin on mine, and I did not want to wait much longer. I felt him pulling at me when he took steps back, and led me with him to the bed. We stumbled our way there, pressed together, with my hands under his shirt and sliding fingernails over the bare skin on his belly. But I could not let him go, I could not breathe air that had not passed his lips first. I wanted to feel him everywhere.  
   
He kept walking until the back of his legs hit the bed, and I felt us moving horizontally on smooth, ice blue sheets. My body pressed down on top of his as I caught myself with hands on the mattress beside his head.  
   
We rose and fell together as we breathed. Our heartbeats fast, and close to each other behind bone and flesh. Our noses touched and lashes brushed. It was wondrous how well we fit. His lips moved tenderly with mine, without searching for more or deeper or power. It was different than previous nights, and I knew why. He had given me all of him, and I was about to do the same. It was slower, tender, loving. 

Hands ran under my shirt over my bare back and down over my ass before he rolled us over  
and smiled at the nervous state of arousal that must have been dripping off of my face. He knew I had never done this before, and his eyes shone like warm liquid, nothing but affection. He took pride and pleasure in my inexperience, and it was a secret thrill I felt inside us both. “You take my breath away,” he said and kissed me before I could look away from his praise.  
   
It was easy to shove and tug and to have lust rule our bodies for half an hour. But this control and adoration in the way we moved together made me realize how much more he wanted with me. He was respectful about my vulnerability as he stroked my body over my clothes, with care and warmth and incredible intimacy. Even if we had yet to shed any clothing.  
   
When his hand wandered down, I pushed my hips forward to encourage him. Because sweet and slow and beautiful as we pressed together, it wasn’t enough. I wanted more, I wanted all of him. I smiled, open but shy, when he inhaled sharply the moment I rubbed myself against him by pushing myself into his hips.

“Tell me, Will,” he said, demanding, voice raw like sandpaper against my skin and I shuddered at the vibrating words against my throat. “I want you,” I said into his hair. “How?” He breathed, curling fingers against my hips. I pulled both arms around him and pressed my nose under his chin. “Have me,” was my only answer.  
   
He brought big, strong hands up to my face with his index finger rested on my bottom lip and his eyes reflecting the small lights on the bed stands. I gasped when he tilted my neck to press our foreheads together, carefully but firmly. He looked at me so deeply it was like he was already inside the walls of my skull, and his lips moved silently with a thousand words he couldn't seem to vocalize. I saw him searching my face for the answers, and I smiled to tell him how much it didn't matter. I could hear him anyway.  
   
Our mouths opened at the nearness, and our lips almost touched as we breathed each other deeply. I studied him like I had so many times before, feeling I could simply stare at the soft-hued colors and sharp contours of his face forever. But now he was studying me too and the way he was looking at me with lazy eyes that went over my eyes, my mouth, my cheeks, my hair, my hands, was nothing less than worship.  
   
His jaw clenched and his eyes fogged. It was new to him, also. Intimacy without his human veil. I could see the raw, open veins, nerves and bloody flesh when I looked at him. Bare and exposed, without his person suit. He was as vulnerable on top of me as I was under him and knowing that eased the wringing tightness in my belly.  
   
Oh, so softly, I kissed him. Lazy wet lips and tongue, showing him the way I wanted it to be tonight. And he let it happen, let me kiss his lips and caress them gently without any restraints. Surrendering. Letting it be my kiss, for me to say and show what I wanted him to know. Time, the room, and all thoughts swirled away in a dizzy flood of trembling sensations as I felt myself melting between the mattress and his body. We were timeless in those seconds and I felt our bodies quivering as if we were one. 

I felt him kissing the corner of my mouth, my lips to his cheekbone, his to my chin. Then, I buried my face in his soft hair and inhaled deeply to bathe again in his scent. Earth and fire. Smoke and rain. His strong arms tightened around my body possessively as he dipped down a little, and trailed tender kisses down my neck to my collarbone under my shirt. Our eyes locked beautifully. Spring and autumn, seamlessly. Nothing but wide unexplored spaces, no horizon, but everything blending and melting like there had never been any doubt between us. 

He sat up, pulled back, and brought me with him until I was sitting upright with him on his knees between mine on the bed. His hair was disheveled, his clothes pulled and wrung. His high cheekbones stained red.

“You're nervous,” he said and reached to wipe the curls off my forehead. I wondered if he had felt it in the way my fingers twisted in his shirt, or if he could read it in the way I blinked against the flutter behind my eyes. He soothed me with fingertips over my shoulders. “There is more than one way to do this,” he looked at me, playing with the collar of my shirt and I smiled at his genuine concern. He knew I had never been with another man and despite the monster that the world had deemed him to be, love and affection had never felt more real. It was whole and deep and scorching, like everything else about him. I knew what he was suggesting and I knew I wanted that too. I wanted everything, in time. 

“Not tonight,” I said, pressing my lips to his in a tender kiss. “Tonight, I want this.” My fingers brushed back his hair as I climbed up onto his lap and hooked my ankles around his back. We gazed at each other for a moment before I felt him releasing a long breath against my cheek. “Yes.” He didn't waste time unbuttoning my shirt after that and shedding the jacket of his suit. I smiled at his eagerness, as he slipped one strong arm around my bare waist to pull me closer. His salmon shirt followed, off his shoulders and his arms with a little help from us both, and the bare skin of my chest pressed against his. Coarse hairs tickled with the slide of our bodies as one hand rested on the small of my back.  
   
I looked back at him, sharp teeth grazing his lips as he smiled at me with eyes blazing so open wide I felt weakened at the sight. Blood and sunlight, I would name the color in the light on the nightstand. It fit him just right. I stretched my neck to reach him and he met my needs by closing the space between us brushing his lips against mine. Fusing together, the force behind the pressure showing our needs, soft skin sliding together showing patience and care.  
   
His hand roamed lower to slide over my ass in jeans, pressing us closer with needy fingers digging into my skin. My heart jumped at the contact, and my cock followed suit. There was a promise behind those touches, and he would not disappoint in fulfilling them. My heart raced at the thought, feeling the blizzard of lust and the nervous flutter pouncing in my chest. God, he was going to fuck me.

His lips found mine in a hypnotizing motion, over and over, like I was the breath he breathed and I let myself feel and taste, hear and see him, truly, openly, entirely. I could feel my heart thumping loudly in my chest when he hooked his fingers behind my waistband. _Off_ , they said. We had to untangle then, and step off the bed to get rid of unwanted boxers and jeans, briefs and slacks. He did his elegantly, mine got caught on my ankle as I hopped on one foot, but soon we were both completely exposed. Instead of climbing back on the bed, he walked towards me in a way that would have prided a stalking jungle cat, and dropped to his knees before me. My cock was curved proudly against my stomach and I was almost certain he was able to feel the heat radiating off of me when his lips lingered close to the pulsating flesh. “God….” I was struggling to keep myself standing at the sight and leaned back with my hands against the mattress. "We'll go slow,"he promised me, and I nodded silently and bewildered above him as I held the bed and tilted my hips. If he was the prancing cat, I surely was the gaping fish.

It had been a long time since I was that twitchy man Hannibal met in Jack's office, but right now I was sure I looked just like that. Unsteady, unstable, twitching and sweating. This time, however, the cause was a different one. I looked away when he smiled, tousled hair and sharp teeth, burning eyes and his face leveled with my erection. I would not be able to take that sight for long, or feel the barely-there streak of hot breath on my sensitive, blushing skin as he inhaled to smell me.  
   
“Stay with me,” he demanded, as he had done before, and I moaned desperately at the way his words ghosted over my skin like a hot breeze. I knew he was asking me, once more, not to disappear into my own mind, led by emphatic memories. But I also heard the words hidden beneath. _Choose me_. “Yes, yes,” I said and squeezed the wooden edge of the bed when his tight, hot mouth slid over me and enveloped my erection so deeply I could feel the head brush the back of his throat.  
   
It was so hot, so soft yet so tense around my throbbing cock. “Fuck. Fuck. Oh,” there was nothing gentle and everything adoring about his tight, hard strokes, his wet, whole tongue and the merciless swallowing of his throat. He was torturing me by letting me watch my hard cock sliding in and out between those pink lips as he sucked me in until his nose brushed my pubic hair. His eyes closed and his hand reached up to dig nails into my thigh as he swirled his tongue up the slit and down the veins. Hot, tight, soft, wet. Too much. Too much.  
   
"Fuck, Hannibal, stop, stop, stop," I sputtered hoarsely and bundled his hair into my fist to yank at it in warning. He pulled back instantly, letting my hard cock slide from between his lips, glistening with saliva, and looked up at me in concern. "Did I hurt you?" He asked, worry lacing his voice as he stroked one consoling hand down my thigh while the other still gripped my flesh with nails pushed in skin. I shook my head hard and tried to find the words. "I-I won't last," I stuttered at him, trembling under his heated gaze as nails pulled from the flesh of my thigh, and a glint of mirth danced trough his eyes.  
   
He rubbed his nose against the base of my cock and chuckled. “We'd better not stall, then," he said and I answered his teasing smile with a blush. The wooden frame of the bed dug into the back of my legs when he rose to his feet before me and ran his hands up my sides along the way. Teasing turned tender as soon as our noses brushed, and then lips brushed the skin below my ear. “I'm sorry,” I breathed against his ear, trembling at the light touch on my oversensitive skin. “I'm just overwhelmed with...”

“Fear?” He asked, pulling back when I couldn't find the appropriate word and his eyes scanned my face for signs of discomfort. “Anticipation,” I countered, flustered and chuckling at the way his lips curled up in relief. My eyes never landed on a single spot, but his fingers found his way to my chin to hold me steady. “Don't ever apologize,” he whispered, gentle and fierce in a single breath. “You are astonishing.” My breath hitched as his arms embraced me and I let myself be turned over in his arms until I faced the bed. His naked chest pressed against my bare back and I felt his warmth enveloping me as I melted into his body with a low, needy moan. His skin against mine was something I longed to feel in its completion. His breathing stopped the moment I pressed myself back against him, his full erection pressing firmly against the cleft between my cheeks, and we both gasped before his hands started to push me gently forward onto the bed. Hands and knees.

“Trust me,” he said with roaming hands running soothingly over my back and thighs. I inhaled deeply and nodded. It wasn't a question, not even a request. He knew I did, as much as I, or anyone could. Why else would we be here? 

I held myself up on my arms and turned my head when he pressed his full body against my back. Enough for me to be able to reach him when I pressed myself up on my knees and felt his arm wrapping securely around my torso. He instantly captured my parted lips with his, both searching for the reassuring warmth and I cherished being bathed in his scent and his taste. One true moment of fearless passion we could share, before moving on to something I knew I would not yet be able to do as courageously.  
   
He released my lips with a long breath, and rubbed his cheek against my temple before pulling back from our embrace and from my line of vision. My skin was already damp with sweat, a reaction caused by a mix of nerves and arousal rushing through my body, together with the temperature in the room that seemed to rise with every breath and every touch.

I watched it glistering on my arms, the dimmed lamps on the nightstand giving my skin a warm glow. I wondered what I looked like to him, in this light, on hands and knees on the bed with sweat shimmering on my back. In the reflection of the lights, I must have looked like I was on fire, and to me, nothing seemed more fitting. 

I heard the springs of the bed creaking as he shifted his weight, and I was so aware of my body that I made a noise when his hands came to rest on the small of my back. “May I touch you?” He all but whispered, unnecessarily so, considering he just had my cock in his mouth without the same courtesy. But I knew what he was asking this time."Y-Yes," I nodded and heard him inhaling deeply behind me.  
   
He moved closer and I could feel the temperature rising, biting into my lips as I kept my eyes focused on my hands on the mattress. Unsteady fingers dug nails into the softness of the sheets. "Beautiful, Will," I heard and felt him whispering in awe against my spine, lips ghosting over the knotted bones and sliding over damp skin. I swallowed hard before closing my eyes and moaned when his hands came to rest warmly on my calves as he caressed the skin on the back of my legs. Massaging the flesh with a firm but gentle touch as his skilled fingers worked their way up my thighs. I trembled when he touched the sensitive skin on the inside of my legs with featherlight fingertips and I could feel him moving closer as his hand kneaded up to the mounds of my ass with a touch that held lust and want as much as tenderness and patience.

More patience than I cared for. I gasped at the feeling of his strong touch on my skin and wished for those fingers to touch me more intimately when he caressed both my cheeks with open hands, but his fingers worked up and beyond to my lower back and up my spine towards my shoulders. "God, Hannibal," I whimpered in agony, but he took no mercy on me when his hands kept traveling up to touch my shoulders and give the tensed muscles a relaxing squeeze.  
   
The term 'relaxing' had, however, become a relative one, because as his hands slid over the muscles in my neck, his lower body pressed up behind me and I whimpered when I felt he slid his impressive cock in between the cleft of my ass again. "Oh god...," I moaned, wobbling on my arms and I couldn't help but push back against him with a wriggle of my lower body.  
   
He hissed and one of his hands came to rest on my right ass cheek to keep me still as his free hand wandered over my ribs. I shivered, and whimpered through the teeth pressed in my lower lip when his warm fingers grazed my tightened nipples gently, right before pinching them sharply between his thumb and index finger. I moaned out at the unexpected spark of painful pleasure and jerked against him when a jolt ran trough my limbs. His hand remained on my hips to keep me steady, giving me the maddening urge to rock back against the hard cock that was still snugly pressed against my ass.  
   
I tried to keep my hips from buckling when his hands slipped lower and into my dark, short pubic hair above the base of my swollen erection, but his firm grip on my hip forced me to hold still against him as I whimpered and curiously looked down between my legs. “Shit,” I choked when I watched and felt his large, elegant hand cup around my balls and curl long fingers around the already leaking head of my cock. It was absolutely maddening, seeing him fingering my shaft as his thumb rubbed my own pre-cum into the head.  
   
I mewled and clawed at the sheets when his hand wrapped around my entire length to pump it slowly. My nerves remained in torturous overdrive and it caused the familiar buildup of pleasure in my belly to return in its complete state as I gasped at the fragile but intense pressure he was applying on me. It wasn't enough to make me come, which was undoubtedly exactly what he was aiming for, but it was more than enough to make me buckle like an untamed horse.  
   
I groaned when I felt the hand on my hips releasing its pressure, and seized the opportunity it presented by pushing backwards in search for more of his hand around me and more of his cock against my ass. “Will,” he grunted behind me, and I couldn't help but grin when I felt his body jerking from the feeling it brought him. He punished me by pushing nails into my hips as he released my desperate cock and I moaned at the loss of contact. His skin left mine, and despite the blazing heat, I shivered. I took my eyes off myself and felt my elbows weakening from the weight and the anticipation.  
   
“Oh,” I tensed when I felt his hands come up to run over my ass with fingers slowly spreading my cheeks and I felt the air brushing against the puckered skin. I froze in place, quivering on my arms, as I waited for him to touch me there and being very aware now of how exposed I currently was. He was close to me, because I could suddenly feel a stream of hot breath grazing the sensitive area. "Perfect, Will," he said against my skin and I almost sobbed into my upper arm. “Please, Hannibal,” I begged shakily and felt his cheek coming to rest against the small of my back. “Try to relax," he hushed me, and I squinted my eyes to keep myself from looking back as I felt his fingers pushing the mounds of my ass further aside.  
   
“Ohhhh,” I cried out when I suddenly felt his soft, relaxed tongue running smoothly over the hole and the hands I was leaning on became elbows as I slid forward without being able to hold myself up. I shuddered and moaned as my body went boneless and I trembled against his tongue. I had never had that done to me before and it felt so...incredibly dirty. Overexposed, oversensitive, overwhelming.  
   
I closed my eyes and pushed my damp forehead hard into the pillow, pushing my ass higher up in the air as I raised my hips towards his exploring tongue that started to work around me. His hands kept me from buckling against his face as they kept a firm hold on both my cheeks and he pushed his tongue past the rim, and I clenched hard around him.  
   
“Fuck. Oh, fuck,” I buried my head in the pillow and twisted the sheets violently into a ball between my fingers as I quivered against his face. His slick, hot tongue carefully explored my insides with skilled twists and licks. “O-o-oh G-god,” I moaned and lifted my head slightly off the pillow in a desperate attempt to bring more air into my lungs.  
   
It was strange, and good, and weird, and hot and I groaned against the sheets while my body couldn't resist pushing back against his tongue. My damp curl stuck to my forehead and the skin of my arm pressed against my teeth as he touched me, tasted me, intimately. My entire nervous system seemed to revolve around his tongue now, too much and not enough, and it was a blissful torture I had never known before.  
   
He pulled back his tongue with one last teasing lick against my opening and hummed in satisfaction. "You are magnificent," I heard him speaking softly against my skin, a slight tremor in his voice and his accent thick with arousal. He kissed the base of my spine and pulled away from me, leaving me gasping with my head against the pillow. I was rock hard against my belly and I had to resist the urge to sink down against the soft sheets beneath me and ride my hips against the fabric in search for release.

My head shot up when I heard a noise behind me, a drawer opening, followed by a rather loud click of an opened bottle cap. My heart was beating so mercilessly against my chest now it seemed desperate to be set free from its bony cage. I knew exactly what was happening behind me. 

I felt his lips on my neck and a shiver followed them down my shoulders and my spine as one hand ran up my thighs, rested back on one ass cheek and spread me with his fingers. Exposing me for his eyes alone and searching with one gentle finger, slick with lube, to reach my clenched hole and I whimpered when I felt the tip of the finger tracing the sensitive ring of muscle.  
   
"Say stop, and I'll stop," he said against my back, sounding as choked and wrecked as I felt. He wanted this as much as I did, but only if it could be done just right. It wasn't just my first time, after all. It was our first time. "D-don't...Ohh...stop," I encouraged him now as I felt a small drop of sweat grazing my parted lips. My forehead screwed and my body tensed in a mixture of anxiousness, curiosity and heavy arousal. My bottom lip between my teeth was now throbbing from the pressure.  
   
"My dearest Will," he breathed hoarsely, and I shivered when the wet finger traced my opening, rubbing the extremely tender skin of my hole. I hissed, trying to keep myself calm and still as I felt a blunt finger pressing against my entrance. My heart and breath hitched before speeding up when he started to push that slender index finger past the tight ring and into the clenching, hot opening inside. We both moaned simultaneously and I arched my back into the touch as I felt his finger grazing the inner walls. It left me with a slight burning sensation and the strangest, fullest feeling.  
   
My insides clamped around the strange intrusion as I writhed against the sheets. The burning stretch went straight to my aching cock and I wanted to feel that sensation deeper inside and wriggled my hips to give him better access. He hissed behind me, being very pronounced in how much he enjoyed my body and my pleasure and I moaned at the stretching and burning it caused when I pushed around him and sucked his finger in deeper.  
   
"Hannibal," I moaned when his finger slipped halfway in without mercy and he answered my whimpers by wriggling his finger teasingly inside of me. I tried to relax the tensing muscles around his fingers, knowing the way my body struggled against the intrusion was something I had to overcome. I pushed my hips back when my muscles released their grip and he rewarded me by plugging his finger all the way inside. "Ohhhhhh...," I gasped when his finger crooked up and stroked inside me before he drew back and pushed inside again. One thrust, two thrusts, and suddenly brushing a spot inside of me that made my back curl inwards and my knees slide wider. Pleasure clawed desperately inside me, up my belly and down my thighs, shooting straight to my cock and balls. 

I gasped and writhed on his hand and he groaned his satisfaction against the damp skin of my back. The tip of his dragging finger tapped against that blinding spot inside me and the fact that I was doing this with a man that knew human autonomy wasn't lost on me now.  
   
I moaned his name when a second finger probed my entrance and he slid the first one out of me completely. Suddenly I felt two slick fingertips pressing inside, leaving me whimpering in pleasure. They burned and stretched very slowly as my body adjusted to the extra finger exploring inside me and I moaned into my upper arm when I felt his hand kneading my inner thigh with comforting squeezes. "You're doing so good, Will," he praised me with a voice so rough I felt the grain and grit of it on my bare skin. I knew he was struggling to remain posture and control, and it was a feeling he needed as much adjustment for as I did for the fingers inside me.  
   
I felt him twisting until he found that spot inside me again, brushing it clockwise with two fingers as he rotated his hand to make sure he grazed it just right. I pushed my hips towards him, whining like a heated cat as my cheek pressed into the mattress. “God, that's...,” I whimpered at the sensation of that stuttering, threading pleasure that webbed trough my veins and inside my bones where it became a whole new brand of twisted, dark and fiery madness.  
   
He must have felt me throbbing around him and I wondered how much more I could take when my leaking erection twisted desperately against my belly. His fingers rubbed me over and over, scissoring and stretching and exploring me until he could slip in a slippery third. My nails dug hard into the sheets as I groaned openly at the burning intrusion. "Ughhhhhnnn........ Oh, too much, too much," I almost sobbed when I felt that third finger stretching me further and feared I would tear, but he only pushed deeper, dragging his fingers inside and targeting straight for my prostate again.  
   
His stroking motions returned as the burn became one with the pleasure and had me writhing my body in search for more. He seemed to know my body better than I did, and I relaxed around his touch as I pressed my teeth into the flesh of my upper arm. He slid his fingers in and out in an hypnotizing rhythm and I was lost in the pleasure of his skilled fingers. I had never been so vulnerable for anyone before as my words, my movements and my thoughts felt entirely beyond my control.  
   
He kept a steady pace, twisting his wrist as I steadily loosened around him and allowed his fingers deeper inside. Just when I was clenching the curls on my head in my fist, eagerly awaiting completion, he withdrew his fingers completely in one dragging motion that left me empty, wincing and throbbing against the hot air. I blushed at the way my body was still rocking back and forth, searching and wanting and needing more as he placed a last kiss on the base of my spine.  
   
“Turn around,” he said, his throat tight as he spoke against my skin. “I wish to look at you."  
 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW, you guys have been mooooreee than kind with your wonderful comments! It's such an amazing feeling when someone pays attention to something you created! You make me a very happy lady! ^.^ I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Sorry for the slow, slow burn but that happens to be my addiction ;-) Seriously though, thank you thank you thank you guys sooo much!! Much love!
> 
> https://katherinekrawl.tumblr.com/


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Will,” Hannibal whispered my name and when I looked at him, I almost forgot the painful throbbing inside me. Slowly he was pushing in as my body carefully sunk down around him, earning me a burning stretch along the way. But Hannibal, he was worth everything. His flammable eyes were widened like I had never seen them before. A tiny layer of liquid clouded the orb, reflecting the lamplight so heavily they seemed to burn from the inside out .
> 
> Those wet, plump lips were parted as he breathed in uncontrolled pants, his hair was pushed all the way back and his slender neck showed a pulsing vein beneath the skin. He was shimmering with sweat and open without a veil. Strong and weak and soft. Invincible.

I felt my heart thumping in my throat and closed my eyes at the words against my back, struggling to regain control of my breathing. “Don't be afraid,” he said, soft and lost and far away as he kissed up my spine between my shoulder blades. His hand ran down my back and slipped around my waist, roaming over my stomach, my chest, my throat. I moaned when I felt his naked skin pressing against the length of my body as I let his arms lift me upright on my knees against his chest. His arms folded around me from my waist to my chest as he held my trembling body warmly against his and nipped sweetly at the skin beneath my ear with his lips.

"I belong to you, Will,” he whispered. “You have nothing to fear," he breathed against me and I shivered in his embrace. I could feel him against me, strong, hard, hot and whole. His cock was pressed against my back, big and full, and I arched against him, beyond my control. I knew now how good it could be, and this thought excited me as my body ached for more of his touch.

He shifted, and I let him turn me over in his arms, and when our eyes met I inhaled sharply at the sight of him after what we had just shared. He was breathtaking, glowing, wrecked and torn apart from the seam of his mask. In the dimmed lamp-light and the shadows it cast on half of his features, he seemed to be framed with a mysterious glow. People called him the Devil, the fallen angel, and right now, he looked the part. His skin was flushed, adding a shade of subtle pink to the usual pale bronze. His lips were deep red, swollen, bitten. Damp with sweat, his hair was pushed back on his head, out of his eyes. “I'm not afraid,” I sighed against him. “You're mine.”

Those eyes, they were alive. Blazing bourbon that burned uncontrolled, shimmering and flickering with a fire that stretched beyond and beneath every inch of his skin. If I had ever doubted his devotion, his love for me, it was now clear as a cloudless sky. I didn't look away when he rested his forehead against my own and his hand came up to stroke through my mop of untamed curls.

He kissed me. Soft, wet lips pressed tenderly against mine and openly tasted me when his tongue met mine between parted lips. I moaned into his mouth at the familiar and pleasant intrusion and felt myself sagging in his arms when his hand placed itself at the base of my neck. Letting go of my hair, one hand traveled down my side and rested on my hip, kneading the soft flesh gently as he kept my mouth busy with nips and kisses at my lips.  
   
He was distracting me, I realized, and felt my chest filling with a thick, full warmth. I wasn't afraid to be with him. I hadn't lied. But he knew I was still nervous, and I could feel his tender concern through the heat. I poured my body and soul into the kiss and felt him moaning heatedly into a my mouth as he turned us and crawled further up the bed. His back was against the mattress now as I pressed on top of him between his open legs. His erection, hard, wet and dark, rubbed against my lower belly as I straddled him with bended knees resting against his hips. I wasn't trapped beneath him, I wasn't sightless, bent over, controlled. I breathed and shuddered as I pressed against his body, weakened by the knowledge he knew this was what I needed, this time. We were one, as ever we were.  
   
I kissed him, making use of the opportunity to have free access to his lips, as my own desperate erection, trapped between our bodies, rubbed against his hairy abdomen every time I lifted my hips a little. The friction was maddening, rough and hot and sweet, and I felt his hand on my neck sliding down my chest and belly to wrap his fingers around my aching cock. “Beautiful, my sweet boy,”  
he hissed approvingly and I leaned forward to rub our noses together in animalistic affection. I panted against his mouth as strong fingers stroked against my length while he shifted himself and helped me lift my hips with his free hand and a gentle nudge of his knee.  
   
My skin heated pink when he sat up straighter to pull me against him on his lap, bending his legs behind and around me. Our chests rubbed together in a close embrace and his erection pressed against my ass as his fingers released their grip on my throbbing, leaking cock. My whole body growled at the loss, begging for release and for him to have me, link us, finally. "Hannibal, I need....." I chocked out when he thrust against me just as I started rocking my hips against him, creating that much needed friction.

"I know, my sweet," he answered my never spoken words, whispering against my mouth and gasping as I rocked forward to slide the slick head of his cock along the crease of my ass. Our foreheads connected as I mewled in desperate need, neglected lust and exciting fear.

He held my body against his soft, damp skin and I felt us both shivering as one while his eyes stayed locked with mine, bleeding gold and ocean green, for a lingering moment that washed me over with deep, bone-filling, extraordinary warmth. 

He carefully backed away to let our foreheads disconnect and reached behind him to take hold of the small bottle he had taken out of the nightstand earlier, popping it open between his fingers. “Yes?” He whispered, following my lips with his. “Yes,” I said, nodding breathlessly into his shoulder and watching him through hooded lids. He kissed the bridge of my nose before he squeezed a generous amount into his palm and slid his hand down in between us. I lifted my hips to give him easy access to his own thick, hard length and watched him take hold of himself to spread the lube over his leaking tip and swollen shaft, flicking a teasing thumb over the head. He then opened his hand further to envelop me alongside him, stroking us both with a slippery palm as I panted against his shoulder. 

"Lift your hips for me," he whispered gently against my temple, but I could hear the unsteadiness in his voice as he released us and brought his hands down my lower back. He was equally overwhelmed, breathing too high in his chest and guiding my body with hands that betrayed him with the lightest tremor. I pushed myself up on my knees against his body and lifted my hips. "I want it like this,” I said and I swallowed hard while I straddled his lap, hovering above his cock, pressing against the soft flesh of my backside. My hands scratched at his naked back possessively: “I want to look at you." 

He trailed fingers down my temples, and kissed me briefly with nothing but soft lips, lightly stretched in a tender smile. "And I at you," he whispered as our foreheads pressed back together. He reached for his cock behind me and placed a guiding hand on my hips as I lowered slowly on my legs. Fingers grazed my opening again as he positioned me above him and my breathing already turned ragged when I felt the blunt, hard and large tip of his erection pushing against my hole. "Ohhh," I gasped, feeling my heart beating loudly inside my throat, but his lips captured mine in a distractive motion as one arm wrapped tightly around my waist.

"There is no hurry, Will. Your body will adjust," he promised, already lost in himself, and I gasped once more when I felt him pushing more firmly against me. Not entering, but waiting for me to bring myself down to meet his thrust as I held myself up on my knees. I closed my eyes and swallowed at the feeling of the big, big head against my hole, already so different from his three fingers, and I knew this was going to hurt. I knew that already, of course, but the coming pain was less scary when it wasn't pressing down upon me yet.

"P-Please, be careful," I begged him, hugging his body close and pressing my nose into his hair. A stream of hot air hit my cheek as he exhaled sharply through his lips. “Like you're my fragile little teacup,” he assured me, smiling against my cheek, and I breathed a chuckle. He stroked one hand through my curls and down my back. “We'll go slow. We've got all the time we need,” he hushed into my ear and I shivered against him. "I'll stop whenever you want me to."

I breathed against his neck and nodded before I pulled myself upright and pushed myself firmer against his cock. My entire body seemed completely focused on the pressure against my entrance, and he claimed my widened eyes with his before I felt the head of his cock slowly intruding past the ring of my hole. “God, Oh!” A white hot burn flashed through me and I tried to keep my body still, fighting the urge to clench while gritting my teeth at the ripping sensation in my body.

"Will," Hannibal whispered my name and when I looked at him, I almost forgot the painful throbbing inside me. Slowly he was pushing in as my body carefully sunk down around him, earning me a burning stretch along the way. But Hannibal, he was worth everything. His flammable eyes were widened like I had never seen them before. A tiny layer of liquid clouded the orb, reflecting the lamplight so heavily they seemed to burn from the inside out .

Those wet, plump lips were parted as he breathed in uncontrolled pants, his hair was pushed all the way back and his slender neck showed a pulsing vein beneath the skin. He was shimmering with sweat and open without a veil. Strong and weak and soft. Invincible. 

I kept our eyes locked and stayed focused on letting my body adjust, sliding my hips slide slowly to impale myself on him and feel the last of his cock entering until he was fully seated inside of me. “Fuck, Hannibal,” I held still, all the way down, but he didn't respond as he was still in the exact same state of complete astonishment. Wide-eyed, fingers pressing into my hips. Mouth agape and heaving chest. Apart from his breathing, he didn't make a single sound.

I wanted to move, find a way to relief the burn, but his hand suddenly gripped me tighter. "Please, hold still," he whispered at me. His eyes stared straight at me as he seemed to struggle with something very powerful inside of him. He was as beautiful as anyone would ever be. No suit, no veil, naked in all ways imaginable.

Several moments passed, and I felt my body gradually relaxing around him while his breathing slowed down. The pain was still there, but it was dulling as I tried to concentrate on nothing but the way he kept his eyes on me. Giving me everything there was inside him, in an offering of worship. I clenched around him, then, and he seemed to wake from his trance. “Oh Will. You are magnificent,” he sighed breathlessly and his hands began stroking feverishly through my hair. “Does it hurt, still?” Thumbs stroked my cheeks, damp with sweat and a single spilled tear. I breathed and nodded but smiled when he started raining down kisses on my nose and cheeks. Feather light, soothing like fluttering lashes and butterfly wings, and I could feel both our bodies connected together on the bed.

The pain faded with those distracting lips on mine and when I lifted my hips slightly to let a little of him slide out, I felt him dragging pleasantly along my insides. He hissed through his teeth with heavily clouded eyes and I pushed down again to take him in further once more. Tight and hot, my body gripped around him, clenching and squeezing as I pushed myself with short strokes up on him and down again. He seemed stunned, struck, awed. His hand never stopped moving on my skin in a desperate attempt for more contact, but inside his eyes, it was still, like gentle rain in the forest, lost and home, all at once. Being inside of me, how good it must have felt to him.

The thought alone was enough to fill my body with pleasant tingles and I framed his face with my unsteady hands and smiled at his expression. “Okay?” I asked and laughed breathlessly when he nodded with abandoned eyes. “Yes, yes,....”

He seemed to have lost any further ability to speak and compensated by stealing my open lips into a plundering kiss. Pushing his tongue against mine, I tasted salt from the sweat and tears he had just kissed away. He poured all of himself into that one kiss and it was enough to set me alight.

He released a throaty moan when I pushed down until he was fully inside of me again, the burn subsiding as it became bearable. Hannibal pulled his lips from me but kept his eyes closed as he rested his cheek against the crook of my shoulder. 

His hand smoothed down my side, encouraging me to relax as we sat in the silence of our beating hearts and conjoined breathing, and my rigid muscles slowly became pliable in his warm embrace. I wrapped my hands in his hair, smoothing it back with both hands as he held still on my shoulder. "Will, love... are you ready to move?" He asked me in a voice I barely recognized, so tight I feared he was chocking. His head lifted to meet my eyes again and I watched him overflow. He was so completely lost, in me.

I nodded my response, speechless from falling into his bottomless eyes and searching for his lips as I felt him kneading the inside of my quivering thighs before holding on to my hips to guide us both. He helped me tilt my pelvis with his hands as he slowly started to lift me off of him and I moaned and gasped when I felt him sliding inside of me again. Right before he was out, he guided me back down on him, and up again. He released small noises of strangled pleasure and angled my hips tighter with his hands when he slid me back down. 

The feeling was strange, but it was good, and I rejoiced in the feeling of his body against mine, the pleasure that poured out of his eyes, the drag of him inside of me. And then it happened. "OH!" I gasped out when he angled my hips towards him with the fifth stroke, causing the head of his cock to brush that place inside of me that had me doubling over against him. That place that set off sparks of wild pleasure through my body, replacing the pain and embracing the burn.

I writhed on his lap at the sudden sensation and a startled gasp escaped me. “Hannibal.” His hands tightened around my waist when he saw and felt my pleasure. I knew he had been searching for that reaction and the way his eyes gleamed showed the obvious pride he took in the way my thighs spasmed against him. “Will,” he breathed against my neck as I held on to him with my hands on his shoulders, pumping my hips in search for more.

"Oh God," I cried, losing the words in a moan when he hit my prostate more precisely, and I pushed down harder around him as my head fell back on my shoulders. I felt his nails scraping against the skin of my back, frantic in his search for something to grip as I clenched around him in a deadly grip. He rested his lips against the hollow of my throat and groaned deeply against my windpipe before boldly pushing his hips upward in sharp, targeted thrusts that hit home with every stroke. It burned me in every glorious way, and I hung on to his shoulders for dear life as my back bent backwards so far it could snap. The pleasure left me blinded, hitting me with every stroke and my fingers and toes curling inwards as my moans linked together in a single, lasting sound from my throat.

"Oh Will, love," Hannibal groaned, primal and heatedly into my neck, as I bounced back on him in abandon, and sobbed when he met every one of my thrusts by pushing his hips up and his cock so far into me his pubic hair grazed the sensitive skin of my ass. I pushed myself back up to kiss his parted lips wetly before I settled forwards to press my bare chest against his. We trembled and moaned and clawed in search for more, holding on to shoulders, hips and hair, lips against lips, teeth on skin. When he was assured all pain had faded, he gave up his control and pushed my body down around him harder, faster, and rode out every last ache to be overflown with stinging, blinding pleasure in return. I squeezed around him now with every stroke up and the teeth at my neck showed me his appreciation.

I wailed loudly when his thrusts met the roll of my hips every single time, faster and faster as we were both growing rapidly more and more desperate for release. I cried out sharply, beyond the capacity for self-consciousness and raked my teeth over his jaw, seeing stars behind my eyes and feeling the pulsating pleasure stinging angrily around my cock, trapped but unwilling to be forgotten between our bodies. “Fuck,” I cursed passionately and he answered with nails in the flesh of my hips and a growl that vibrated against my nose. 

He was completely absorbed and lost in the writhing of our bodies and the connection of flesh and skin and minds. We were together, blurred, bound, united, as one. Truly and wholly. 

I felt him pressing his lips against my neck as he held my hips tighter and pulled me over him in a rhythm that bordered on wild, lost, out of control and it had my body buzzing. Every thrust was sharp and deep, sure and unforgiving. But he never missed that spot inside of me that sent me to Heaven and Hell with every slamming beat, and I felt myself bathing in the golden glow that was our world.

One hand left my hips now, which were stuttering as if on their own accord, and he brought it up to stroke my hair, my face, my chest, my thighs as he looked at me with eyes as golden as that burning glow inside me. I grabbed on to his shoulders tighter, clutching and pawing at the skin and sobbing when he slammed mercilessly inside me as my body became disconnected from the world. Heavy pleasure was building inside my belly and cock as my leaking erection, neglected between our bellies, rubbed against his abdomen with every stroke. Neither of us had touched me there, knowing it would all be over too soon.

His breathing quickened to match mine, his grunts became whimpers and his hands held on tighter to my hips. He was close. "God, Hannibal….." I mewled, wild and gone and completely beyond myself as my body bounced hard on his lap with his cock, hard and swollen, rutting deep in my ass. I heard him grunting in response, burying the noise against my sweaty collarbone. We were both glowing with sweat, heat and the fiery bed lights and I felt him gritting his teeth against my sternum. I knew neither one of us would last much longer now.

I felt a tear slipping between my lids when he kissed me needily with soft, open lips as one free hand searched for mine, lacing our fingers together between us. I had never seen him so human as I saw him now. Our bodies rolled together perfectly as we pressed close, sharing kisses between us or pressing our foreheads together, gasping and moaning in pleasure as drops of sweat danced off of our joined flesh.

"Will," he gasped in awe and I threw my head back with open mouth when his thrusts became sharper and shallow, his cock hammering on my prostate. He made every nerve in me sing with every stroke and I revelled in our love making, all attention and connection and blood pumping beneath our skin. Alive. This was what we were supposed to be doing. Always. Forever.

He clung to my hips and I met his pace more than willingly, as I watched his head falling back in the same strangling pleasure that was choking me. Both chasing a powerful release that was so close in reach. His temple rested against my cheek with his rapid breathing in my ear and our hands remained laced between us. No one had ever made it feel like this, and I could safely bet no one ever would. My hips rode him as I let myself take over the rhythm and I rose and fell around his cock pushing deeply inside of me, making my insides flutter and my groin tighten with pleasure. Our skin rubbed together beautifully with every stroke, chests and stomachs, soft and hard and damp. He cried out against me when I gripped him tighter, eyes rolling back in his head as I rode him harder, feeling his body tensing up with mine as I felt him pulsing wildly inside of me. My erection rubbed against his hairy stomach, while his cock filled me up completely and I couldn't stop what was fast approaching.

"Oh, oh, oh, oh..." I started sobbing with every thrust and I knew I was going to cum when I felt that familiar yet very powerful tightening of my body as he kept hitting my prostate dead on. I felt his hand reaching between us to my leaking cock and he grabbed the throbbing shaft, pumped me once, and I was gone. “Hannibal...” I cried his name before I felt myself falling off the edge so hard I felt my voice fading into white and my entire body clenched when I felt spreading violently inside me. One last and hard thrust was enough to set off my throbbing cock.

My muscles spasmed intensely as I felt my ass clenching aggressively around him while gripping, scorching pleasure shot from my pulsating ass and cock to my knees, my jaw, between my shoulder blades... and everything in between. My seed spilled on both his and my chest as I shuddered uncontrollably on and around him, only gasping sharply when I felt all sound leaving my body.

The heavy clenching and shuddering around him sent him right along with me and I felt him go rigged against my chest as he let out a cry that got stuck in his throat. Holding on to me as we rode out the waves, quick and hard, until my inner walls milked him through his release and my insides were coated with his warm liquid.

That intense bliss set heavily upon us as I slowed my hips before coming to a halt on top of him. Sweat rolled off of our spent and sticky bodies as I felt him collapsing boneless against me with an exhausted, content sigh. He held on to me as he let himself fall back onto the mattress with me on top of him, facing the wrong way on the bed with our feet pointing at the headboard.

I rose and fell on his rapidly moving chest as he cradled me in his arms to push me up higher on his body. He kept quiet for the moment, with eyes full of fiery hazel, hazy calm and soft tenderness that came with being in love. I looked back, smiling in exhaustion as we both had no words to speak. No words were needed.

We simply lay together, quietly with my head resting on his chest. My warm body curled against his as he slowly pulled out of me to roll us to the side, spooning himself behind me as he embraced my still quivering body with his safe arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to come! With a little more dialogue next time ;-)  
> I really hope you guye enjoyed this one, even if it was just smut, smut and more smut :-P  
> Thank you all so much for reading and for your amazing comments and kudos and bookmarks! I am so very spoiled! I hope to maybe continue writing fanfiction after this, if I get more inspiration! I do really enjoy it and I love the Hannibal fandom soooo much!
> 
> https://katherinekrawl.tumblr.com/


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Will,” he pulled back, lips and eyes tightened in stubborn determination. “I'd rather go back to prison than risk you.” It was important to him that I listened. It wasn't a sugary promise in the face of butterfly feelings. It was a confession on the subject I had breeched many times, and always craved a clearer answer to. He would rather see me safe and leaving, than harmed and staying. It wasn't a promise of any sort, but it was an intention, a wish, a design he wanted to fulfill. I breathed in deeply, held it and released it between my rounded lips. His eyes were a solid stare and I looked away before I nodded, briefly, swallowing against the tight scratch inside my throat.

I woke up wrapped in soft sheets and warm arms, chest hair against my shoulder blades and hips pressed against the small of my back. It was the first time I woke in his bed. In hindsight I could say I would never sleep in the room I previously considered mine again, because after tonight, his bedroom was our bedroom and this bed was our bed. 

We had made less than quick work of the clean up last night, using wet tongues and wet towels, hot and lukewarm, soft and smooth against sticky skin. I had slid under the covers without asking if he wished me to stay, but by the way he'd caged me gently in his arms and buried his nose behind my earlobe, I had assumed him pleased to have me there. That night, after watching him reaching blindly for me every time our embrace loosened in sleep, I never wondered again.

I was greeted by presidential blue wallpaper when I opened my eyes, and a cocoon of his earthy scent swirling with mine. It made it all the easier to remember where I was and how I got there, and the memory caused my toes to curl into the warm, soft sheets around my feet. I sighed, stretched my legs and tried to sink back into the warmth when I remembered what had woken me up in the first place; the increasing, persistent pressure on my bladder. I ignored the need for a pee for another 15 minutes and allowed myself to be enveloped by the naked body that pressed against my bare back, feeling his steady heartbeat filling me with an odd sense of calm. Relieving myself, however, quickly became a necessity that would no longer allow being neglected, and with a frustrated sigh I untangled myself from the sheets and Hannibal's arms, gritting my teeth against the cool morning air.

I padded to the bathroom, barefoot and bare-everything-else, and quickly emptied my bladder as I balanced over the toilet bowl with one arm braced against the wall. When I washed my hands in the sink, I noticed the mop of wild curls on my head, the red marks on my neck and the shallow scratches of fingernails on my hips. I blinked and touched a red-blueish bruise right below my earlobe, huffing into the morning silence. I had never had marks like these before, post-sex. The sight made me frown as I bit my lips against a pushing smile, averting my eyes as I wiped my hands on a towel. I realized when I closed the door behind me, it was the first time since the cliff that my eyes had not wandered to the scar on my cheek.

He was awake when I stepped back into the bedroom and I felt a small pang of annoyance with myself for not having been more quiet, as I had hoped to crawl back into his arms unnoticed and watch him wake. Not that it mattered, I was not uncertain there would be plenty more opportunities for that later. 

He sat up against the headboard, his hairy chest bared as the sheets clung around his hips. His hair was as untamed as I had ever seen it, wild from the previous night where my fingers had tangled and untangled in the strands. He smiled, flashing a shy hint of teeth, as his arm reached for me. “Come back to bed,” he said, eyes shining clear and bright. Unfairly so, after such a short night. But when I had looked in the mirror, I had seen my own eyes, and they were just the same. “I wasn't going anywhere,” I said, unable to fight the stretch of my lips and the heat in my cheeks when I felt his eyes running over me. I was utterly exposed, but those liquid amber eyes showed nothing but absolute pleasure at the sight of me, and I didn't feel the heat of shame creeping up my skin under his stare. The heat I felt was of a different kind.

“Good,” he said, satisfied when I slid between the covers next to him and let myself be pulled into a loose embrace. He brushed his lips against the top of my head and I heard him inhaling deeply into my curls. _Did you just smell me?_ I had once asked him in a time and place far, far away. He had smelled sickness on me then, but I knew it was him he smelled on me today. It would explain why he pressed his nose in deeper, and inhaled again before sighing against me in what could only be a territorial sort of satisfaction.

I turned towards him in his arms and watched his face opening up when our eyes met. They swirled in earthy colors as his lips stretched around his sharp teeth in restful bliss. It was different now. I looked at him and found only so little of the past, where we'd missed each other all those times we should have met. I had desperately wanted it to be different that way. Forward. And I wanted it forever. “What are your plans for today?” I asked and brought up my hand to run it down his exposed neck and chest. “I don't recall making any plans,” he answered, and bit his lips with one sharp fang when my thumb ran through the coarse hairs over his sternum and across a hard nipple.

“No plans for today?” I asked, feigning innocence, and smiled at his fluttering eyelids when I ran fingernails down his ribs, enjoying the way he twisted under my touch.“No plans for this week,” he corrected, and I continued my journey down his belly. My fingers followed the curve of his hips, inside his thigh, and he sighed and closed his eyes at the feeling of my searching touch against his bare skin. “Make that this month,” he said and I huffed at the wicked pull of his lips, reaching down to cup his interested, twisting cock. “Years,” he moaned when I took him fully in hand and squeezed him. “Decades,” he gasped and I chuckled against his ear before he wrapped his arms around my waist and rolled us over, pressing gently on top of me as he rested his elbows next to my shoulders. We kissed, slowly, with nothing but lips.

“Really, that long?” I said, playing coy as I ran my hand up and down his arms and shoulders. “I wouldn't want to hog your attention.” It was a lie and he recognized it for nothing less. He watched me through heavy lids, eyes like Christmas lights beneath them. “You are the only thing in this world truly worthy of my attention,” he said, fingers running up my jaw. I pressed my lips together, hiding the pleasure I felt at his words. “Lucky me,” I said, raising a teasing eyebrow that he answered with one of his own. “Yes. And lucky me.”

He buried his fingers in my hair and rested his nose against the crook of my neck as he breathed and pressed against me. He didn't seem in a hurry for anything more than just to enjoy my nearness and I knew I was in for heaven and hell, living life with a man that lived life so thoroughly, with complete and utter patience.

We stayed like that, my fingers running lazily down his neck and shoulders. He was quiet and still, content with me, and I sighed against his skin. Life with him would never be without fear, I was not under such an illusion. But I did want it to be transparent. I knew the life I wished us to live and the life he wished for us to have, they would not always be compatible. Compromise had never been his strong suit. “Hannibal...” I said, and felt him lifting his head. “...I'm not sure my chrysalis hatched like you expected it to. Or if it did at all.”

We lay in silence before he answered, and his fingers curled loosely around my throat when he did. “You are the most magnificent creature I have ever laid eyes upon, Will. Hatched or cocooned,” he said, releasing the words between his lips as if they were corporal, and he allowed me to push against his shoulders to look at him.

“This is real,” I said. “This is me choosing you.” I looked up into flickering flames with a determination I had feared before. “Yes,” he said, eyes soft and fingers following the shell of my ears. He didn't have to say it in return. He had said it a million times in a million different ways from the moment we met. I heard it only now. “I love you, Hannibal,” I said, my voice tender, but not hesitant. He didn't move in the moments after that. He looked at me, a pull at his lips, and breathed before he allowed himself to smile in full. “Careful with that, my dear Will,” he said, mirth on his voice. “Falling in love with you has been my downfall.”

“Has it, now?” I smiled, running a hand over my face as he nosed the underside of my jaw. Lips came to press against my chin before he grazed it with his teeth. “I'll still serve meat,” he said, half a whisper against skin. I sighed and pressed my lips together against his forehead. He was, casually yet clearly, making a side note of his wishes in what we would now call 'our life', without actually having named it that. He wasn't used to the need for consent, and I had no doubt his fear for my answer made him feel unusually exposed. “I don't care,” I answered truthfully. I wished to care. I wished to be a better man. I wished to think about Molly, Wally, Alana, Jack, and to think with a yearning, a need to know how they were. Truth was, the space they took up in my head was negligible. It had been for a while. Everything inside me was blemished and bled over with him. That too, had been a while.

Lips pressed against my earlobe, a tongue behind the shell. “I'll ask you to join me,” he said and I inhaled sharply through my nose resting against his temple. “Where?” I asked, but needn't to. “The opera, the stores, the restaurants,” he said, and I waited, fruitfully. “Hunting and killing.” His voice was deep in my ear, leaving me feel chaffed. I knew him. I knew he desired to share it with me. He also knew I was still coming to understand my need to share it with him. “I'll join you,” I said and felt him pulling back before his head lifted and curious amber eyes looked into mine. His lips were already forming around a reply, but I pulled it from under him when I opened my mouth and said, “On _my_ terms.” I was pleased to have sounded as stern as I had intended, looking back up into his eyes with a lasting gaze. He pressed his lips into a smile and tilted his head gently to one side. “Trust me, my dearest Will,” he said, with poorly hidden content and defeat. “There is nothing left that isn't on your terms.”

I framed his face with my hands and pulled his open mouth onto mine. “I don't care about anything outside of these walls...” I confessed against his skin, breathing and dragging dry lips along his. He hummed in agreement, but I pushed fingernails into his shoulders to underline my next words: “As long as you have no more _plans_ for me.” He arched into the sting before he captured my lips fully into a needy press of lips and tongue. “Oh, I've got _plans_ for you,” he breathed hot and wet against my cheek, smiling with one corner of his lips is a mischievous manner that made me push against his torso in protest. “Hannibal,” I said, soft but stern as his soothing fingers wound lightly in my hair. “No more plans.” He agreed, almost a promise, and looked at me with half lidded eyes. He stroked up my face to my temples and rubbed the skin with his thumbs. “I know that look on your face,” he sighed, drawing circles against my skin. “You're thinking too much,” he said. “That's what always got us in trouble.”

I breathed a laugh between my teeth, widening my eyes as I ran hands up his neck and into his hair. “ _My_ thoughts got us in trouble?” I huffed, as he looked at me with those gleaming eyes that were filled with life as much as death. “ _Your_ thoughts, and _my_ feelings,” he added, showing a wicked slice of teeth and stroking against the side of my cheeks with his fingers. I closed my eyes and chuckled before I agreed. “Yes.” His lips traveled up over my cheek unto my ear. “I'm not living this life without you, not if I can help it.” He spoke so carefully I only heard the syllables. I sighed, and toyed with the idea of replying that he could, indeed, help it. But there was more he wished to say, I felt it in the tension in his shoulders.

“Will,” he pulled back, lips and eyes tightened in stubborn determination. “I'd rather go back to prison than risk you.” It was important to him that I listened. It wasn't a sugary promise in the face of butterfly feelings. It was a confession on the subject I had breeched many times, and always craved a clearer answer to. He would rather see me safe and leaving, than harmed and staying. It wasn't a promise of any sort, but it was an intention, a wish, a design he wanted to fulfill. I breathed in deeply, held it and released it between my rounded lips. His eyes were a solid stare and I looked away before I nodded, briefly, swallowing against the tight scratch inside my throat. Lips brushed between my eyes. “You needed me to say it,” he said, and I slipped my hands around his neck to hold him close as our noses brushed. “Yes, I did.”

We kissed, and I brushed his hair behind his ears as he held my neck and head in large hands. I breathed and pulled him closer against my face, pressing my nose against his sharp cheekbone. “Could you daily feel a stab of hunger for me?” I whispered against the soft skin above the day old stubble. “Find nourishment at the very sight of me?” He inhaled sharply, pressing fingertips into the skin of my shoulders. “Oh yes, yes I can,” he sighed as he dragged his hands around the bones of my neck. He squeezed and I bit my lip, dropping back my head. “As I ache for you,” I whispered and felt his smile against my skin, stretched wide and honest. He dipped his head into my neck and brushed the skin with his lips before moving to my nose, my cheeks, my eyelids, my forehead and my lips. “I love you. I love you. Aš tave myliu,” he whispered between kisses.

It quickly grew into something that needed to be more and I rolled onto my stomach as his slick fingers worked to open me. Not as patient as the previous night, but this time I didn't need him to be. His weight on my back was a completing experience, one that filled a missing part, as he pressed in with one long stroke. He gripped my throat to lift my head back, in search for my mouth on his. It was slow and hard before it became frantic and harder. His hips were steady, straddling mine, and every grunt and every breath was in my ear. Teeth pulled at my back and neck, and arms gripped around my torso and onto my shoulders. He fucked me, and there was nothing human about it. My cock was trapped beneath my body on the mattress, writhing along with the movements of his sharp thrusts and with every snap of his hips. I whined alternatingly into the mattress and his mouth as my hands clawed at the pillow. It burned so beautifully, inside and out, dark and love and painful pleasure with sharp, stinging edges.

He pulled out of me, flipped me over, and crawled back onto my body. He was between my legs and back inside me before my eyes had time to open, and I saw him, teeth and claws and soft skin, silky hair. Slower, caressing inside and out and his hands entwined with mine beside my head, my knees pushed against his sides. He placed a kiss on my wrist as one hand came to guide my hips down around him every time he pushed up.

It was his love letter, burned along the corners. I knew it as we slotted together in heat and wet pleasure and I watched his eyes blazing black. This was all Hannibal. This was what I had chosen. Savage, always. Raw in power and control. There was love and tenderness and beauty, living alongside the darkness within him, but never without it. I could always trust him to get us there, anywhere, but I would not be spared the sharp thorns on the branches along the way. 

Perhaps in ten years, age would soften the edges. I smiled to myself and grabbed hold of his hair as he slowed his hips, briefly, to kiss my lips. Ten years from now, would we both live, I would be there to find out.

He took my cock in his hand after moments upon heated moments of pushing our bodies in and against each other, and he came deep inside of me while I spurted all over my belly and his hand. He kissed me, cleaned me, and made me breakfast. 

We went for a walk in the afternoon, and I felt his fingers curling around mine when we stopped alongside the lake he had mentioned to me before. “I would like you to take me fishing,” he said, pressing our palms together. I knew I could decline and he would never bring it up again. But I didn't dismiss it this time. “Do you, now?” I said, a small, teasing smile on my lips as I felt his fingers squeezing around mine. “I'm sure we can both find enjoyment in it,” he offered, and I tilted my head to look at him. He would find enjoyment in it. He would find enjoyment like I did at the opera. His enjoyment would be mine.

On our next walk, I would tell him what I had decided would ring in the start of a new life with him, here or wherever. A stray, maybe two. I wouldn't ask him, I wouldn't ask permission. It was what I needed, always had needed, in my life. A pleasure and a joy, something I excelled at. And something I deserved. I knew already he wouldn't try to deny me. Better yet, he would save clippings of articles from the shelter in the local paper, pushing them to me across the table at breakfast without a word.

We had lunch after our walk, laughed wholeheartedly for the first time in many years over nothing particularly funny and then fucked against the kitchen door. I still had yet to find answers to many questions. I had yet to find out where we were and where we were going. I didn't know the plans, if there were any, he had made for us. How our life was going to be a year from now, or five, or when we were both gray, dressed in cardigans and drinking sherry. Truth was, I had never been one to know my destination.  
But I did know there would never be room left or made for anyone else. And for the first time, the acceptance of that knowledge made me whole,... 

...made me happy.

FIN

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that's it! That is the end! That was my very first Hannibal fanfic and it really felt amazing writing and posting it! So who knows what the future brings! Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to read my work and to leave comments, kudos and booktags! You have been more than generous and it really boosted my confidence to keep writing! You are all such amazing people and I feel lucky and blessed to have found the courage to join the Hannibal Fandom! We really do share a passion for beauty, insanity and humanity ;-) I love you guys!
> 
> https://katherinekrawl.tumblr.com/


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